Based Camp - Learning From Mossad： What Exploding Pagers Can Teach Us About Getting a Job

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone! Today we are going to be talking about an interesting topic which actually transformed the way that we personally think about things like looking for jobs, attracting press, and attracting donors, which was how Mossad, that's Israel's intelligence agency, pulled off the pager strike on Hezbollah.

00:00:24.440 And a lot more information has come out about this over time, so I'm going to try to paint a full picture, including a lot of things that I'm pretty sure that even you didn't know, Simone.

00:00:33.820 Here's, for example, an interesting one I didn't know. Did you know about the security feature thing on this, where to decode a message with the pager that they had sold to Hezbollah, you needed to have both hands on the device?

00:00:50.800 Oh, interesting. Wow.

00:00:52.260 The way it worked is they built a security feature where you could only decode an encoded Hezbollah message if you had both of your hands on the device, like holding it in different locations, which ensured when they sent out the initial thing to make the devices explode, it only exploded when people were answering this specific coded message. 0.62

00:01:15.880 So they had to have both of their hands on the device when it exploded, which ensured that both of their proximity, like someone didn't have a pager sitting on their nightstand and it just went off.

00:01:27.760 Well, no, so there were two different instances of the explosion. The first instance was they sent out a coded message, and then anybody who hadn't answered that message, their pagers then later exploded like the next day or something all at once.

00:01:39.780 But the important thing about the message is it removed these people from fighter capabilities. If you don't have your two hands, whatever other injuries you have, you can't shoot a gun.

00:01:51.440 And so the goal there was to remove them from fighter capabilities. There's all sorts of cool stuff like that that you will learn. And I just like to, as we go into this, I am not going to give my standard Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah rant this time. So just I'm sort of leaving morality at the door. 0.65

00:02:10.380 What we're talking about here is the tactical process that went into Mossad's actions, which for those who have been living in a cave, they managed to get, that is to say Mossad, Israel's intelligence apparatus, managed to get a hostile entity to purchase a bunch of pagers that it had created that were embedded bombs that were used for monitoring.

00:02:37.560 And this was done for years. And then recently, this year, this detonated them, maiming quite a few people. Basically a huge devastating attack, not just in terms of one sort of violent strike that took place on one day, but also sort of dismantling their communication infrastructure.

00:02:57.340 So this was a very impressive feat. We're not talking about what was right or wrong morally. What we're talking about is how they got to do this and what in terms of operating tactically as humans, businesses, nonprofits, advocates.

00:03:14.200 So again, just leaving all of the morality out of this, all of the, well, they killed this many people. Well, they killed this many people. That's not the point of this particular talk.

00:03:22.720 And if you want to see us go on and on about Israel, Palestine, the moral weight of the equation, we do that in plenty of other episodes.

00:03:28.780 In this particular episode, we are going to focus on how this was accomplished.

00:03:34.020 So the gist, the pagers went off around 3.30 p.m. All in all, this particular attack injured around 3,000 individuals.

00:03:43.260 And keep in mind that for most of those individuals, it was losing both their hands. So it disabled them in terms of being fighters.

00:03:49.600 Didn't like completely lose their hands. Like I just, I never really heard that much about what actually happened.

00:03:54.880 Yes, lost their hands. As I said, they had to have both hands on it for it to go off.

00:03:59.020 Wow. Well, I mean, but that like, were their hands just burned or were they literally blown off?

00:04:04.660 Blown off. Wow. Okay.

00:04:07.020 30. Now, now some of them were in the second round of the attack, but it seems like the vast majority were in this initial round because they, it went around.

00:04:14.000 Don't touch them after that. Get them away from you.

00:04:15.780 So 37 died in total. And that included, at least if we are to believe the governments that were in league with Hezbollah, two children, one eight-year-old and one 11-year-old.

00:04:29.800 Sad, but again, I'm always a little skeptical of the governments that are involved in this stuff.

00:04:34.820 So let's go and talk through how the plan actually worked.

00:04:39.800 The, and I will note, it's actually kind of remarkable how targeted this attack was when you consider broad attack operations that it didn't just mostly target individuals just in Hezbollah, but specifically high level command and operation individuals who would have had access to these.

00:04:58.660 And then it was followed up almost immediately afterwards, a few days afterwards with an explosion of a second booby trap device that many of them had, which was their walkie talkies, which had actually not just been booby trapped, but booby trapped in a completely separate instance of booby trapping, which we'll get to.

00:05:16.120 And I'd been transmitting everything Hezbollah had been saying over them to Mossad for the past 10 years. 0.84

00:05:21.320 This is like a level of spy craft that I feel is, is, is cinematic.

00:05:26.520 It is unbelievable in the sophistication.

00:05:32.140 Specifically with the walkie talkies, the first part of this involved rigging the walkie talkies was oversized batteries that concealed explosives, allowing Mossad to eavesdrop on Hezbollah communications for nearly a decade.

00:05:43.820 The walkie talkies were distributed as early as 2015, giving Israel full access to Hezbollah's communication network while lying dormant as potential bombs, ready to be detonated at a moment's notice.

00:05:55.880 One interesting fact that we can now ferret out is that it does appear that Hamas did keep the January 7th attacks secret from Hezbollah, because if Hezbollah had known, Israel would have done.

00:06:11.540 Right. And you've kept saying, like, how could it possibly be that Mossad had this level of infiltration in Hezbollah when Hamas was planning all this and they didn't know that Hamas was planning for October 7th.

00:06:24.600 But theoretically, it could be really nailing it in, you know, statistics and just bomb history like it happens. Right.

00:06:34.720 So, yeah. So, in 2022, a new opportunity arose, leading Hamas to focus on a more innovative device, the AR924 Pager.

00:06:45.220 Now, I will note, actually, with the walkie talkie device, one of the things that was actually, and a lot of people consider this pretty bad form that this was done, is because they went off so soon after the first device,

00:06:56.940 many of them ended up going off at the funerals of the first round of victims, which is generally considered very bad form in conflict, but it was incredibly effective.

00:07:07.920 And we'll get to this at the end here, but Hezbollah has basically been almost entirely dismantled at its network level and upper levels,

00:07:15.480 to the extent that people are calling this the best, both intelligence and counter-terrorism operation run in the past century.

00:07:23.580 And that it was, like, better than anything that was done during World War II, better than anything that was done during the Cold War,

00:07:30.760 in terms of its effectiveness, and just completely taking this down.

00:07:35.420 And there's been...

00:07:35.880 Because they were also putting upon, basically, well, you can't use email, you can't use cell phones,

00:07:42.220 you can't use any modern form of technology, because other intelligence forces, including Mossad, are monitoring those.

00:07:51.260 And so, ultimately, it's like Mossad, through its...

00:07:55.540 So many levels pushed Hezbollah to these devices. 0.67

00:07:59.780 It's not like they want to just use pagers and walkie talkies.

00:08:02.420 They were doing that, because already, Mossad's prowess in cyber warfare was so strong.

00:08:08.200 So there's, like, attacks on all sides.

00:08:10.420 Yes. And one of my favorite memes that came out of this with a Babylon Bee article,

00:08:15.540 Rashid Taleb uninjured after her pager mysteriously explodes.

00:08:19.160 This is a very pro-Palestine American politician.

00:08:22.660 But anyway, to continue here, let's start with the construction of the pagers themselves.

00:08:27.140 The explosive component pentothrital tetrine, otherwise known as PETN, did the most damage.

00:08:34.980 Mossad technicians found a way to insert a very thin square sheet of PETN between two battery cells and a strip of highly flammable material to act as the detonator.

00:08:47.140 The entire package was placed in a plastic sleeve, which was encapsulated in a metal case, roughly the size of a matchbox.

00:08:54.140 When the command was given, the flammable strip generated a spark to light the detonator and trigger the PNTN to explode.

00:09:02.300 The explosives took away some of the battery's power, which Hezbollah noticed when the battery would drain faster than expected.

00:09:08.860 However, they never put two and two together and continued use of the device.

00:09:12.180 Now, this is really fascinating because it meant that these devices could not be detected in an x-ray and they could not be detected even if the devices were dismantled.

00:09:24.140 Because they did not use the things that you're typically searching for, which is traditional explosives or a wick.

00:09:31.480 So there wasn't anything to look for, which is kind of a bad thing because it means if any of them didn't explode,

00:09:37.800 now Hezbollah has plans for a device that can easily get through airport security,

00:09:43.320 which they almost certainly did when they got these devices.

00:09:47.600 They almost certainly scanned them through x-rays, dismantled them, looked through them.

00:09:51.200 You would not have been able to turn this even as an explosive expert.

00:09:55.020 And I note here that the point of putting it between the two batteries wasn't just to hide it,

00:09:59.080 but it was also to amplify the explosion using the power of the batteries.

00:10:02.920 Oh, that makes sense because I was thinking, how could you possibly have something as small as a pager blow off someone's hands

00:10:11.160 when the explosive device is such a thin film of material?

00:10:15.620 But that makes sense because there are plenty of concerns.

00:10:18.580 I mean, anyone who's flown recently has been asked if they're checking luggage,

00:10:21.800 if there are any batteries in their bag, because batteries can be quite explosive.

00:10:25.500 So now it's all coming together.

00:10:26.980 And these were very large, oversized batteries that were meant to last a month.

00:10:30.300 Right. And this was a selling point of the pagers, just how, quote unquote, rugged they were.

00:10:35.120 And so there would be no suspicion that this oversized battery, yeah.

00:10:39.180 Which was how they explained that these had a unique battery that were non-standard in other models.

00:10:44.100 Yes.

00:10:44.640 So the cover story was particularly interested here.

00:10:47.600 And this gets to like where we can learn personally from this.

00:10:50.340 Yeah.

00:10:50.660 The PETN battery packet that Mossad constructed had a label on it, LIBT783.

00:10:56.640 This was an issue because that specific battery did not exist.

00:10:59.900 Mossad started by creating a custom model for the entire pager, AR924.

00:11:05.780 They approached a renowned Taiwanese brand, Gold Apollo, to add it to their catalog.

00:11:12.120 Hui Ching Kwan, the chairman of Gold Apollo, was approached by a former employee and her new boss named, quote unquote, Tom, to inquire about adding the model.

00:11:22.780 Ching Kwan said that while he wasn't impressed with the AR924 when he saw it,

00:11:28.520 he agreed to grant a license under the brand and add photos and description of the product to his company's website, thus unknowingly establishing the legitimacy of the Mossad pager.

00:11:39.700 Oh, by the way, I should note here, I am reading an unrolled tweet here, and I'll add in post who it's by.

00:11:45.220 Rayland Givens.

00:11:46.400 In September 2023, a website came online with the AR924 listed as a product.

00:11:53.300 This site was tied to a Hong Kong-based company, Apollo Systems HK, of which no record exists today.

00:11:59.220 In late 2023, two additional states came online with the LIBT783 battery listed in their product list, amongst other legitimate units.

00:12:10.140 The sales pitch came from a trusted source.

00:12:12.700 A marketing official was linked to the Apollo brand.

00:12:15.160 This individual, a former Middle Eastern sale representative of the Taiwanese company that manufactured the pagers, had no knowledge of Mossad's involvement.

00:12:22.320 She established her own company, obtained a license to sell a product, and unknowingly facilitated the sale to Hezbollah, according to Israeli officials familiar with the operation.

00:12:32.540 She convinced Hezbollah leaders that the AR924 pager was perfect for their needs.

00:12:37.860 Quote, she was the one in touch with Hezbollah and explained to them why the bigger pager with a larger battery was better than the original model, end quote, said an Israeli official.

00:12:48.420 So this is the thing that's really interesting about how all of this was laid out.

00:12:53.820 They had no one implanted within Hezbollah in order to get them to buy these.

00:13:00.280 In other words, they set the gears in place for Hezbollah to independently decide that this was the best decision. 0.92

00:13:11.400 So there's a scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the protagonist's mother talks about how you have to, as a wife, get your husband to come to decide that it was all his idea in the beginning.

00:13:26.980 And she just lays the ideas and he sort of incepts his mind with ultimately the right course of action.

00:13:34.340 But it all has to be his decision in the end.

00:13:37.000 We must let Costa think this was his idea that he came up with.

00:13:41.560 All right.

00:13:41.900 Now he's going to figure it out.

00:13:43.100 Don't you worry.

00:13:43.420 I know what to do.

00:13:44.940 I have your answer.

00:13:48.260 Tula will go to the travel agency and you send Nikki here to work for us. 1.00

00:13:54.420 Oh, I can't believe that.

00:13:58.920 Wonderful.

00:13:59.840 Wonderful.

00:14:01.820 You see a man?

00:14:03.020 Yes.

00:14:04.140 Oh, you see.

00:14:06.200 Gas.

00:14:06.920 Gas.

00:14:07.600 Oh, gas.

00:14:08.280 That is exactly what it like is.

00:14:10.220 Israel, or Mossad in this case, Greek mothered Hezbollah into deciding for itself that it was going to purchase these pagers.

00:14:19.060 I feel like a knuckles is they're good people.

00:14:20.500 Good people, they're Greeks, and Greeks are just Jews without money. 1.00

00:14:25.460 It was a total inception moment, and I find that really fascinating.

00:14:30.260 And I also think that it's a very relevant way for things to happen in an age in which we have new ways, I think, of deciding whether something is true, whether a product is worth buying.

00:14:46.100 Right?

00:14:46.680 Like, we don't, these days, I mean, okay, a lot of people are really gullible, and they just, like, buy something immediately on TikTok shop.

00:14:53.100 But I think when most people are seriously deciding on a product, they're not going to believe ads.

00:14:57.920 They're not going to believe website copy.

00:14:59.800 They're going to, like, Google around, look at forums, see what people are saying on Reddit, and based on the breadcrumbs that they find online through sources they trust, through sources they think are legitimate because they don't look polished or they don't look promotional, then they're going to buy it.

00:15:15.600 And that is what's so interesting to me, makes me think, okay, well, if we want people to make bets on us, or to decide that we are good partners, or friends, or sources of help, because we do want to be helpful to people, how can we show up in places where people trust?

00:15:34.980 Businesses and people used to invest in things like publicists, and PR agencies, and things like that, so that the New York Times would write about you.

00:15:43.120 But now, if the New York Times is shilling about someone, no one's going to, like, that means nothing.

00:15:49.120 You know, it just means that you've played a particular pool or spent a certain amount of money with someone.

00:15:54.660 So this is fascinating.

00:15:57.240 Yeah, it is fascinating, and it's something where we personally, you know, before we go further with this, think for yourself, how can you turn yourself into the pager here?

00:16:07.800 How can you ensure that you astroturf an online environment so that an intent-driven buyer, whether it's an employer, like in our case, like maybe the Trump administration, when they are looking for a specific type of thing, they will find us?

00:16:23.900 And this is something we've been paying a lot of attention to recently.

00:16:26.700 How do we get our, because right now, the way a lot of people do searches is AIs.

00:16:32.500 How do we get our content into AI training data?

00:16:35.320 And I actually had a big breakthrough on that today, Simone.

00:16:37.120 You'll be quite excited.

00:16:37.780 Ooh, exciting.

00:16:39.160 Okay.

00:16:40.840 Well, we've got to wait for a bit more follow-up.

00:16:42.580 But yeah, we might get into the core AI training data that's used in most AI models these days.

00:16:47.680 Yeah.

00:16:48.140 All of our podcasts and books, when they wouldn't have been otherwise, which I'm excited about.

00:16:52.080 Yeah, it's like, we want to be where the chatbots are.

00:16:56.140 We want to see, want to see them search and around for those, what's that word again?

00:17:03.840 Deeds.

00:17:06.060 We really like, but that's the point though, right?

00:17:08.600 Is you have to go where people are and you have to go where now AI chat, like bots are searching.

00:17:14.720 And if you aren't there, I think this is something, I think it happens very slowly.

00:17:21.020 Like, oh, Indy.

00:17:23.360 For example, there was a sort of a revelation, maybe five to seven years ago, that traditional

00:17:29.180 ads just weren't working.

00:17:32.200 And a lot of companies just turned off their marketing budgets and discovered, lo and behold,

00:17:37.920 their sales were unchanged.

00:17:39.940 Famous thing that happened with Uber.

00:17:41.140 They turned off, they shut down their entire marketing department, which was however many

00:17:44.640 million dollars a year.

00:17:45.620 And it had like a 0% effect on sales.

00:17:48.300 Yeah.

00:17:48.640 And a lot of companies followed suit.

00:17:50.580 And I think this played a big role in the end of things like the New York Times and a

00:17:54.940 bunch of magazines making money from, for example, print ads.

00:17:58.440 And I think that also played a big role in the fall of TV ads, where now most of these platforms

00:18:04.100 are making money from subscribers, not from ad revenue.

00:18:07.300 And this is used to, because audiences have shifted to new places.

00:18:11.300 Now YouTube is making all that kind of ad revenue, but even that's kind of it.

00:18:14.940 And it's really interesting.

00:18:16.340 And the problem is that when a lot of people are looking at things, and I see this, for

00:18:20.500 example, with more junior employees at our business, when they think like, we're going

00:18:27.220 to promote something.

00:18:28.120 They're like, let's buy ads.

00:18:29.560 They're like, let's post something on Facebook.

00:18:31.720 And that's just not, it may have worked like a long, long time ago, but it doesn't work

00:18:39.100 now.

00:18:39.820 And the question now isn't even how are people finding things today, but how will people

00:18:45.660 be finding things?

00:18:47.100 And to your point, importantly, how will I be finding things in six months to a year?

00:18:54.360 You know, not only was this a feat of engineering that was quite exceptional, it was a feat of marketing

00:18:59.720 that was quite exceptional.

00:19:01.980 Marketing to a specific end buyer through a third party that didn't know they were acting

00:19:07.860 on behalf of Masad.

00:19:10.420 Yeah, one of the proof points.

00:19:11.440 I think this mixture of both synthetic data, you know, these companies and these forum posts

00:19:17.520 from people who probably weren't legitimate, you know, that was made up sort of synthetic

00:19:21.440 data, combined with legitimate data, where they got that one business to list the product

00:19:27.900 in its catalog.

00:19:29.480 And combining that, because it's a lot harder to get that one, like that was a big get for

00:19:33.020 them, I'm sure, when they got that company to list them in the catalog.

00:19:35.840 And then they knew that if they supplemented that with the other thing, that would be enough

00:19:39.760 subtle proof points.

00:19:41.080 It's enough astroturfing to convince the Hezbollah procurement leaders to make that decision

00:19:47.380 and think this is legit, this looks fine.

00:19:49.480 So that's, I think that's really interesting too, is how do you combine stuff that you post

00:19:54.120 with something else?

00:19:55.240 I think another interesting and important factor going forward is going to be costly

00:20:00.960 signaling from third parties.

00:20:03.180 Like to what extent is someone else willing to invest their reputation in endorsing you

00:20:08.960 in a way that, you know, you couldn't get yourself, which is why people are, for example,

00:20:15.260 constantly trying to get on like Rogan podcast, because that is a very costly signal on his

00:20:19.940 part.

00:20:20.220 And if Joe Rogan endorses you, that means something to a bunch of people.

00:20:25.660 But that can be done on a micro scale, a very meaningful way with micro influencers,

00:20:30.420 or even just with very specific people in very specific industries.

00:20:34.260 Like my dad works in the ophthalmic industry, and he knows that if very specific surgeons

00:20:39.800 are willing to be like, oh yeah, I've tried the cannula insertion system, like it's legit,

00:20:46.040 you're good.

00:20:48.160 And if you were to combine that with some synthetic endorsements from other people online,

00:20:52.820 you've got a product.

00:20:54.380 So let's talk about what they actually ended up doing.

00:20:58.180 So users of two online forums discussing batteries even made posts about LIBT783 and the AR924

00:21:06.400 praising its quote, great performance, end quote, and ruggedness for field use.

00:21:13.680 When Hezbollah searched for a new pager, their procurement manager chose the AR924.

00:21:19.460 So they keyword stuffed the astroturfing that they were doing, probably on sites like Reddit

00:21:24.640 and other tech forums, with the word rugged and long battery life, which is the two things

00:21:31.020 that they expected that Hezbollah would be looking for.

00:21:34.180 One of the key selling points was the oversized battery, which I said, which lasted, oh, sorry,

00:21:38.620 not a month, months without needing to be recharged.

00:21:40.920 But what's interesting here is this actually served both parties.

00:21:45.620 It served Hezbollah because they could use it for people in remote regions, but it served

00:21:50.580 the Israeli intelligence agency because it added more explosive to the device.

00:21:56.820 The salesperson who brokered the deal offered a, quote, very inexpensive proposition, end quote,

00:22:01.840 and continued reducing the price until the Hezbollah manager agreed.

00:22:05.100 So this is the person who they were selling through.

00:22:06.720 I mean, I think that's also smart, and it shouldn't be understated just how much you

00:22:12.300 can leverage both, just the general principle of conservation energy.

00:22:18.080 And that is in the form of like, can you save people mental processing power, money?

00:22:24.940 Okay, that's an advantage that you should be leveraging.

00:22:27.560 And so there's, they're like, well, we're just going to make this an offer you can't

00:22:31.300 refuse by making these very, very inexpensive.

00:22:34.600 Yeah.

00:22:35.440 Also, a thing to note here, when we talk about how severely Israel was able to damage Hezbollah

00:22:41.640 here, and I think that this is something that hasn't really been picked up by anyone officially

00:22:45.300 yet, but I suspect that this is a big thing that happened, is Israel looked at who after

00:22:50.780 the explosions, like they used the explosions themselves to target and locate Hezbollah members,

00:22:56.120 because immediately after the chain of explosions, they ended up targeting a number of high-level

00:23:00.880 leaders within Hezbollah, basically wiping out their entire leadership.

00:23:04.540 And what I was mentioning earlier is there was a British spy who had worked on Afghanistan

00:23:10.100 and was like, how did they achieve this so quickly when we were unable to achieve this

00:23:14.180 in a decade in Afghanistan?

00:23:16.940 And specifically here, Hezbollah launched an internal probe of what went wrong.

00:23:22.780 However, the senior official leading the investigation, Nabul Kwok, was himself killed in an Israeli

00:23:28.820 airstrike just 11 days after the Pagers went off.

00:23:32.220 The internal investigation is supposedly still in progress, but the organization is mostly

00:23:38.100 defunct now, at least from a high-level position, which is absolutely wild.

00:23:44.020 And when I say defunct, I'm not talking about the political side of Hezbollah, I'm talking

00:23:46.720 about the military side of Hezbollah here.

00:23:48.360 Also, an interesting thing to note here when you're talking at least about the walkie-talkies,

00:23:52.440 is when Netanyahu came into office, they were already distributed to individuals.

00:23:58.000 So he was just brought in on this project.

00:24:00.020 He was not the coordinator of it, although he was sort of, I think, in charge of the

00:24:04.100 Pager-specific project.

00:24:06.180 And another thing to talk about here, if you're not broadly familiar with it, on September

00:24:10.040 27th, they dropped a Bunker Buster missile on an operation beneath Beirut.

00:24:17.940 It was personally authorized by Netanyahu, and it ended up killing the, I think, the number

00:24:24.580 one guy at Hezbollah, who was Hassan Nasarullah, which everyone thought was basically untouchable.

00:24:31.520 So here I'll also talk about, because I did a deep dive into, like, why specifically Israel

00:24:36.300 has been so much more effective than our own intelligence agencies.

00:24:40.360 And it appears to be two things.

00:24:42.240 One is less concern with civilian casualties.

00:24:45.560 And so the guy who was doing this contrasted, for example, what happened in Beirut was what

00:24:51.400 happened with Osama bin Laden.

00:24:53.240 He's like, we were fairly certain we knew where Osama bin Laden was.

00:24:56.380 So we went in, whiz helicopters, you know, protected even individuals on Osama bin Laden's compound,

00:25:04.120 and tried to just take out Osama bin Laden and anyone who is offering active resistance.

00:25:09.380 Whereas when they targeted a group, they're like, yeah, I'll just drop a missile, Bunker

00:25:13.320 Buster, all the way down, anyone who's in the surrounding buildings, whatever.

00:25:17.100 And it's dramatically easier.

00:25:18.980 And I should also point out that there was a nuance here, which is when Osama bin Laden was

00:25:23.500 in a ally of ours country, or at least a country that was pretending to be our ally.

00:25:28.060 So there was a bit more of nuance to making absolutely sure that like, we really were

00:25:35.040 getting Osama bin Laden and that we weren't causing, I get that, but I do think that this 0.99

00:25:40.020 is a big difference.

00:25:41.040 We see our head enemy and we go in and we land helicopters and we risk lives and we try

00:25:47.240 to, whereas Israel was just like, let's take out this entire, just whatever.

00:25:51.500 We have them here for this day, just take it all out.

00:25:53.840 And I think that we, as we enter a new world, which is what we're entering, it's a world

00:26:01.340 where the U.S. isn't so, what's the word here?

00:26:04.900 Like unilaterally overpowered within conflicts.

00:26:08.260 When we do get into conflicts where individuals are attacking the safety of our sovereign citizens,

00:26:15.660 we need, I think, to take more of an Israel mindset to this because it's the only, it leads 1.00

00:26:21.660 to less suffering overall in that it ends conflicts.

00:26:26.260 Whereas, and people can be like, how could you say that when you look at how bad things

00:26:29.380 are in this region and this region that Israel's involved in?

00:26:32.020 And I'm like, yeah, but they were worse in the U.S. and Afghanistan.

00:26:35.740 We ended up pulling out and the Taliban took control.

00:26:39.280 Like we, everyone who collaborated with us ended up likely having their families killed,

00:26:43.940 likely ended up having their, like we betrayed the people who trusted our intention to bring

00:26:49.720 any form of real democracy to the region by not being harsh enough or strict enough in creating

00:26:56.980 a long-term peace in the region, which we haven't done.

00:27:00.860 How do we have to do more like the Assad petition? 0.92

00:27:02.920 Yeah.

00:27:03.540 I think this is where military tactics and politicians being involved gets, because how do you get

00:27:12.680 reelected by people who have feelings and care about violence and also, you know, make trade-offs

00:27:21.780 that involve short-term atrocities, essentially, short-term violence, short-term losses?

00:27:28.080 Because people don't hear in the news, like, this many people have, you know, this many people

00:27:33.300 have been starved in a famine.

00:27:34.860 Many people have been, you know, systematically killed as political dissidents in this regime.

00:27:40.740 Oh, yeah. And as you point out, this is something that you don't hear. You don't hear about the

00:27:44.900 civilians of Gaza that Hamas was mass murdering. You don't hear about the people that Hezbollah 0.88

00:27:51.160 killed within their own country. You don't hear about the dissenters who said, hey, maybe we shouldn't

00:27:56.080 go to a war against Israel on this stuff. You do not hear this stuff because it is not in the

00:28:01.580 interest of the narrative. And I think that you're absolutely right about this. And I think it

00:28:07.080 involves people, and a lot of people don't. They don't have, like, the level of incredulity.

00:28:11.520 I think, well, this is also a classic trolley problem, right? That most people when asked,

00:28:16.840 like, well, if you, if there's a trolley and it's headed toward, you know, five people and

00:28:23.640 you could save those five people and you change its direction on the tracks and by then you're

00:28:27.940 going to kill one person, most people are like, I'm not going to do that. I don't want to be

00:28:32.000 responsible for killing one person. And this is a classic example of the trolley problem

00:28:36.200 where, like, in this case, people were violently dismembered in some cases or, well, dismembered,

00:28:42.540 right? That's, like, you'll lose your hand. And, you know, according to reports, some children

00:28:48.220 were killed. Like, this is, you know, an unforgivable atrocity, right? Like, no one, no one would want

00:28:53.920 to do that. No one wants to pull the lever and do something that could kill children or they

00:28:58.300 could really hurt people in their homes. You know, this is, this is horrifying. But at

00:29:01.860 the same time, no one's looking at the other side of the tracks here. They're not looking

00:29:06.680 at what is happening in the counterfactual. And it's just a difficult situation. But yeah,

00:29:13.120 I mean, like, gosh, girl, what's wrong? Hey. Well, this is actually something I wanted to

00:29:19.360 do a whole episode on and I'll post a scene from Trigun here.

00:29:22.100 Uh.

00:29:25.660 Oh! Oh! 0.97

00:29:28.360 That was the easiest way to stop him. You wanted to save the butterfly, right?

00:29:33.180 I didn't want to kill the spider. I wanted to save them both.

00:29:36.400 Unless the spider caught the butterfly, it would die of starvation anyway. You can't save

00:29:40.620 both, don't you know that?

00:29:42.380 It's not right to make that choice so easily. Both of them are living creatures, Knives.

00:29:47.680 So you should...

00:29:48.540 But I'm not wrong about this, Rem. If you just keep saving the butterflies, the spiders

00:29:52.700 will die. 0.61

00:29:53.340 Yes, but...

00:29:53.920 Wanting to save both is just a naive contradiction. And what would you have rather had us do,

00:29:58.760 just stand and think about it? In the meantime, while we do that, the spider eats the butterfly.

00:30:04.760 What's wrong with you, Knives? Don't you understand? I wanted to save both of them, you idiot!

00:30:13.280 You don't make any sense, Bash. 1.00

00:30:15.320 I don't think so, Knives! You're the one who doesn't make any sense! 0.99

00:30:20.020 You have to make a choice here. You can't always say that you're going to save both.

00:30:27.580 And I think that the responsibility of a leader is accepting the moral weight of the trolley

00:30:33.540 problem decision. Is to say, I, as a leader, will make this choice. And I think that this

00:30:39.840 is actually something that, you know, when I contrast, for example, Biden and Trump in

00:30:43.280 their foreign policy, that Trump did exceptionally well over and over and over again, is he was

00:30:49.960 willing to send the random missile onto, like, pseudo-friendly territory. He was willing to,

00:30:55.080 like, whenever somebody would cross a line, he would swat them in the face. And Biden was

00:31:00.300 unwilling to do that. He was unwilling to send the targeted missiles into the caravans of

00:31:05.060 countries' leaders and stuff like that. Because that required accepting moral culpability

00:31:11.120 for potentially lowering further escalation. And that is a really scary thing.

00:31:17.320 Well, and what's funny is I actually feel like these days there is more widespread moral interest,

00:31:24.160 like moral openness to this kind of behavior. There's this really popular fantasy romance

00:31:31.300 series out now called, I think, A Court of Thorn and Roses. I think that's the first one.

00:31:35.640 And the protagonist in it, named Farrah, spoiler alert, by the way, at the end of the first book,

00:31:42.000 to essentially save all the fairies of this land, decides to violently murder three innocent people. 0.96

00:31:49.280 Well, fairies, in this case. Like, stab them to death in front of a bunch of people. And she does 1.00

00:31:54.180 it, like, she could have chosen to sort of surrender and let these fairies continue to be 1.00

00:32:01.020 enslaved by this evil regime. But instead, she chose to murder these people. As they were begging, 0.97

00:32:08.400 you know, making eye contact and begging, like, please don't kill me. And she stabbed them to death 0.96

00:32:13.520 or slit their throats or whatever it is she did. And then had to live with that for the rest of her life. 1.00

00:32:18.500 And they frame her as a hero. I kind of hate her character. She's a terrible, whiny, mean, 0.95

00:32:25.140 bitchy person. But she's seen as a hero. She's seen as curse breaker in the land after that point. 1.00

00:32:30.780 And here you have this really popular female protagonist in a very popular series, right?

00:32:35.780 Because, right, like, the only thing that women or people in general are reading is, like, fantasy 0.99

00:32:40.840 romance novels, right? Who did this? You know, who did, who pulled the lever in the trolley problem.

00:32:46.440 So I feel like humans are capable of having this, like, intellectual debate and making these

00:32:53.000 decisions. It's just maybe politicians don't realize that or they don't know quite how to message it.

00:32:57.820 But I do think that there is a way to thread this needle and make people capable of recognizing

00:33:03.500 the value of making very, very heartbreaking decisions in the name of a better future to

00:33:12.760 prevent overall fewer heartbreaking things from happening. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that you're

00:33:18.680 absolutely right. And I think that the goal, and this is one of the things that you'd mentioned

00:33:22.720 to one of our friends who's mad at us for a recent Israel video, and you're like, yeah,

00:33:25.420 but we were talking about Hamas being a problem. And Hamas is a problem. It's a problem for Israel, 0.56

00:33:29.520 and it's a problem for Gaza. And it's the same with Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a problem not just 0.82

00:33:33.560 for Israel, but in the regions in which it operates. If you are, for example, gay, you know, 0.98

00:33:39.180 it's not just the Jewish people have to worry about this. Or, for example, somebody who thinks that 0.58

00:33:43.700 maybe they shouldn't be as extreme with Israel. You are putting your life at risk. You are putting 0.95

00:33:47.780 your kids' lives at risk. And I think this is a big problem for people who try to draw parallels

00:33:52.880 between what Israel is doing and what Hamas is doing. In Israel, on the seventh attacks,

00:34:00.080 one of the big events that was hit was a protest against the way the Israeli government was relating

00:34:06.440 to the people of Gaza. If someone in Gaza protested pro-Jewish, pro-the state of Israel,

00:34:13.520 they would be killed, and their family would be killed. It's a huge difference. In Israel, 0.96

00:34:19.120 people say that the government's wrong all the time. Regardless of your thoughts of how evil Israel

00:34:24.440 is, Hamas and Hezbollah are definitely a net negative for the world, and even the people that 1.00

00:34:30.720 they rule over would be better off if they were completely eliminated. That cannot be said of the

00:34:36.580 state of Israel right now, whether you're talking about the Muslims who live within the state of Israel

00:34:40.540 right now, or the Jews who live within the state of Israel right now, because there is a very large

00:34:44.680 Muslim population that lives in Israel and quite well. That is not true of Jews living in, say, 1.00

00:34:50.460 Gaza or Palestine, or really any of the Arab-majority countries.

00:34:55.600 Or if you're just not a state bureaucrat. If you're a Hamas bureaucrat, you're getting food, 0.98

00:35:00.340 you're diverting aid payments to go to, for example, we know it's Hamas, go to Tunnel that was supposed 0.58

00:35:05.700 to go to aid payments. It was supposed to feed children. And so by destroying these organizations,

00:35:10.700 you make people bet things better, not just for the people of Israel, but the people of these

00:35:14.580 individual regions. And so if you can get a mostly targeted attack, like you had with the Pager

00:35:19.960 situation, you are almost certainly saving more than two children's lives in terms of redirected aid

00:35:26.640 payment and stuff like that. But this is something that just is really hard to communicate to people,

00:35:32.080 especially when you have this sort of latent anti-Semitism, which I think twists everything

00:35:37.960 that's tied to this region for a lot of people. Or I think more than the latent anti-Semitism is

00:35:44.800 the belief that you get within the urban monoculture that the weaker party must be the more just party,

00:35:49.760 or the less competent party must be the more just party. In the same way that in the U.S. you have

00:35:54.220 this thing where, oh, somebody robbed someone, well, they must have been poor, or they must have been

00:35:58.120 desperate. Oh, you fought back against a robber? You shot the robber? Oh, you monster.

00:36:02.080 No! How could this happen? Where did society go wrong? How could the system fail this poor man? 1.00

00:36:15.280 If only he'd had a better school! Do you want some hot cocoa? Huh. The cause of injury seems

00:36:24.460 to be socio-economics. Most likely an underfunded library. That's it?

00:36:29.920 You shot this beautiful man for no reason! She's evil incarnate! He was stabbing. Murderer! Murderer! 0.99

00:36:45.460 He was expressing himself! Nothing! And this is just a framing that we see over and over and over

00:36:52.360 again now, but when it's applied at the country level, it becomes quite monstrous. And I note that

00:36:56.460 this don't retaliate mindset in the same way that when it's held towards criminals, it's held by

00:37:02.040 wealthy people who live in nice neighborhoods without a lot of crime. When it's held at the

00:37:06.200 country level, it's mostly countries that don't have antagonistic countries next to them constantly

00:37:10.880 saying they want to kill them. Which is why, if you look recently, one of Israel's recent really, 0.90

00:37:16.320 really tight alliances it's been building is with South Korea. And I think it's because South Korea 0.56

00:37:21.340 gets, quote, gets it much more than a country like the U.S. where, you know, we can say, oh,

00:37:28.380 there should be norms about, you know, your neighbors that are very much like a, you know,

00:37:33.100 a wealthy person who lives in a wealthy gated community and says, well, you know, I never fight

00:37:36.720 back when I'm attacked. Why would this person who lives in a very dangerous neighborhood need

00:37:41.540 to concealed carry or something like that? And this also reminds me a bit of an individual like

00:37:46.180 this where they're like, well, yeah, he lived in a dangerous neighborhood and now he's concealed

00:37:49.360 carrying and he's defending himself, but he's doing that because he was part of a gang and his gang

00:37:55.660 attacked this other person's gang. And therefore that other gang is justified to attack him, which

00:38:01.920 is very, again, similar with like what's going on with Israel right now. All of these countries in the

00:38:06.020 region are constantly at war with other countries in this region or having coups or having other

00:38:12.540 sorts of bloodshed that we just don't need to deal with if you're in Europe or America. And so you

00:38:18.200 don't think about it. But when we're recording all this and when we're talking about all this,

00:38:22.480 we overfocus, I think, on the points that involve Israel instead of the other countries in the region

00:38:28.260 because there isn't a, well, a narrative reason to focus on those, you know. I mean, I think the real

00:38:32.940 reason is Israel has Jews and the other countries don't have Jews and a lot of people don't like

00:38:38.180 Jews for religious or whatever reasons. And so some people downstream of that who get their

00:38:45.580 information from sources that they don't know are controlled by like Qatar, for example, they think

00:38:50.880 that Israel has been uniquely belligerent in this region because the people who are feeding them 0.76

00:38:56.720 information have no need to tell them actually every country in the region has a grudge against every

00:39:01.320 other country in the region for X, Y, and Z region. And this is just a framing that we see over and

00:39:06.540 over and over again now. But when it's applied at the country level, it becomes quite monstrous.

00:39:10.640 And I think that this comes back to one of the original sort of selling points of effective

00:39:15.380 altruism is this recognition that human intuition doesn't always correlate with the optimal choice or

00:39:24.540 with the most altruistic outcome or intervention.

00:39:27.760 Well, I have absolutely loved talking with you today, Simone. I am excited for dinner tonight.

00:39:33.760 She is going to cook down the pumpkin soup she made to create a curry that's going to go on top of rice,

00:39:38.220 which I am so excited to eat. It looks really yummy. It was so yummy yesterday. It was one of the best

00:39:42.680 soups I've ever had. And I have had a great time talking with you, Simone.

00:39:46.100 Now. Now it's happening.

00:39:52.720 I really like to keep the scene visually interesting. I need something in that other corner.

00:39:56.660 Yes, you do. Yeah, why did that sword go away? You weren't letting the kids play with it, were you?

00:40:00.880 I was playing with it.

00:40:02.640 Oh, no, yeah. It's fine for you to play with it, you know.

00:40:05.480 Well, and the kids were playing with it a little bit.

00:40:07.720 Oh, boy. Okay. I guess it's good strength training for them. That thing is heavy.

00:40:12.740 Yeah, and it's also good endurance testing. You see, this, I learned this from Morrowind back in the day.

00:40:18.240 You just get hit with a weak weapon over and over again.

00:40:20.780 It's just, unfortunately, we started our kids with a great sword, so there were a few injuries.

00:40:25.040 All right.

00:40:27.300 March, march, march, march, march, march, march, march, march, march, march, march, march, march, march.

00:40:34.380 March, march, march, march.

00:40:57.840 March, march.

00:40:58.680 March, march, march, march, march, march, march.

Based Camp - November 21, 2024

Learning From Mossad： What Exploding Pagers Can Teach Us About Getting a Job

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