Making Sense - Sam Harris - #465 — More From Sam： Iran, Jihadism, Conspiracism, AI Disruption, the Manosphere, and More

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:26.400 made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing

00:00:30.400 here, please consider becoming one. Welcome back to another episode of More From Sam. I just want

00:00:39.480 to remind everybody we are taping this live in front of subscribers, and we've had them submit

00:00:43.360 questions in advance of the show. And then we've asked them to provide any follow-ups using the

00:00:47.980 chat feature so that we can try to have Sam, you, address their feedback in real time. All right,

00:00:53.360 let's get on to our first topic. I want to start with Iran again. Last time we discussed holding

00:00:57.520 two thoughts in our heads at the same time. One, you thinking it was right to get rid of the Iranian

00:01:01.640 regime, and two, that you were worried that we were being led by an incompetent administration.

00:01:06.540 How are you feeling at this moment? Well, I think that sort of two-fold impression has only

00:01:10.880 solidified. I mean, certainly the incompetence has been on display, and the consequences of the initial

00:01:16.980 incompetence. I mean, see, the initial incompetence was to have done absolutely nothing to prepare

00:01:20.840 the American people or Congress for this war, to have lurched into it in an authoritarian way,

00:01:26.760 to have given fuel and even seeming evidence to conspiracy theorists who think we were dragged

00:01:32.300 into it by Israel. I mean, I'll acknowledge that Israel and America don't have precisely the same

00:01:39.520 set of concerns and incentives in this war, right? So it's rational to differentiate between

00:01:44.380 Israel's needs and America's. I mean, I think that's, to some degree, that's true. So we could talk

00:01:48.700 about that. And yeah, so there's no clear rationale for the war. I mean, Trump has said all manner of

00:01:56.880 thing as a reason for us doing this, and has been totally unpersuasive. Strangely, he has a

00:02:04.220 communication problem that's almost at the level of Biden's during his presence. I mean, Biden's

00:02:09.780 massive failing as a president, you know, among his many minor failings, is that he couldn't communicate

00:02:15.300 at a certain point. He couldn't communicate at all about anything, and he just simply had to hide

00:02:20.200 from the public for, you know, obviously neurological reasons. Well, I don't know what Trump's reasons

00:02:24.860 are, but Trump is totally ineffective in communicating about this because he either doesn't know anything,

00:02:32.260 you know, or he's content to be completely incoherent or doesn't notice that he's incoherent. But he's

00:02:37.160 just, the messaging has been terrible. And in the run-up to this, we've done nothing but alienate our

00:02:42.480 allies with tariffs and threats and bullying and, you know, authoritarian nonsense. And now that we

00:02:49.060 need allies, surprisingly, right, to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, apparently we want our allies to

00:02:55.300 help us do that. That comes as a surprise to many people. I'm not sure it should have, but it seems to

00:03:01.100 have come as a surprise to Trump because at one point Keir Starmer offered a British ship, I believe,

00:03:07.240 or two or three. And Trump said, no, no thanks. We don't need someone who's coming into late to a war

00:03:12.960 that's already been won. And now he's bullying Starmer to give the ships that he actually needs,

00:03:19.000 right? So it's just, it is the most unprofessional, slipshod, shambolic messaging around this. And so

00:03:27.220 one can only hope that the actual dropping of bombs is being executed with real precision and,

00:03:33.280 you know, impressive competence. I have no reason to believe it isn't. But so it's just,

00:03:37.940 it's totally reasonable to be worried that we could screw this up. I don't have, you know, I'm not

00:03:44.320 confident we will screw this up. I mean, I think I will be unsurprised if this turns out to be a

00:03:49.740 success despite all of these malapropisms. I think it could be a success, right? We could wake up one day

00:03:55.900 to realize that there's a, you know, a secular democracy being born in Iran because we destroyed this

00:04:02.140 evil regime and it's what the bulk of the Iranian people really wanted all the while, right? And

00:04:08.160 so we could stumble into real success here and that's certainly to be hoped for, but it could also

00:04:13.680 be a ghastly failure about we could produce something like a failed state in Iran and that

00:04:19.320 will seem to vindicate all the people who were against this war in the first place. And then the

00:04:24.040 one other thing I would point out is that most of the people who are against this war are not making

00:04:27.760 the most basic acknowledgement of the evil of the Iranian regime and the needless misery of the

00:04:33.520 Iranian people, right? So they're not connecting the humanitarian dots that they really should

00:04:37.700 connect to be sane critics of this war. I mean, the first thing you have to say if you're going to

00:04:43.160 criticize this war is to acknowledge that this is an evil regime that would be better if it didn't

00:04:47.540 exist and your heart goes out to the Iranian people who don't want to live under this miserable

00:04:53.300 theocracy, but you have these further reasons to worry that this adventure is a very bad idea. And

00:04:59.680 there's an argument to be had there. I mean, Damon Linker just published a Substack article that made

00:05:04.480 that case and I thought fairly persuasively, but still most critics of this war don't do that and

00:05:10.560 they're just, they sound completely delusional to me. Yeah, well, I mean, you did point out that

00:05:14.760 Trump went to war without NATO and now he's telling them, you know, hey, you guys are the one that

00:05:18.780 needs the oil. So, uh, you, uh, you know, get in here to the straight-up war moves. Yeah, but worse

00:05:23.540 than that, he's also saying that we need the help, right? Like we actually couldn't do this on our

00:05:28.280 own, it seems, right? I mean, now it remains to be seen whether that's going to be true, but there is

00:05:32.480 this perception that we have already gotten in over our heads, despite how much we have pulverized

00:05:39.520 the regime, right? I mean, the evidence of that is pretty remarkable, but the fact that, I mean,

00:05:45.180 we either appeared not to have anticipated how easy it is and how asymmetrical the threat is in

00:05:50.640 the Strait of Hormuz and how it's like, well, you know, one guy in a fishing boat with a suicide

00:05:54.260 vest could close the whole thing down, you know, or just was one... I think it's a little bit more...

00:05:59.540 ...one person laying mines. No, I mean, it's very, it's totally asymmetrical, apparently. I mean,

00:06:03.620 you really need, you can't let one person with one mine have access to the water, otherwise no one's

00:06:10.940 going to send a ship through, right? And now we're in this awful position of watching the Iranians

00:06:16.300 dictate who can come through the Strait, right? So, you know, Iranian oil and Chinese ships are

00:06:22.920 happily passing through the Strait, apparently, and we're letting that happen because we don't

00:06:28.040 have control. And so it is, that part appears to be a humiliating failure in the making. I think I

00:06:35.120 would also add that if at the end of all of this, there hasn't been regime change, and the Iranian

00:06:41.340 people are still under the boot of theocrats, and we're now left to try to negotiate with some

00:06:48.940 religious fanatic who perhaps is pretending not to be a fanatic about their, you know, the existing,

00:06:55.600 you know, 400 kilograms of partially enriched uranium that they still have, and their aspirations to

00:07:02.020 spin up more, I think that will be just an objective failure, right? It would be better

00:07:06.920 not to have, as much as we have degraded the regime, that would be bad for the U.S. I'm not

00:07:12.160 so sure it'd be bad for Israel in the same way. Maybe, maybe everything from here forward, no matter

00:07:16.400 what happens, is a success from Israel's point of view. Again, we don't have quite the same interest

00:07:21.960 there, but simply because Iran, you know, a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel,

00:07:28.500 there's no question. So pulverizing the regime, degrading their capacity, killing their ballistic

00:07:33.660 missile regime, if only that, right? That's, that's a good.

00:07:38.940 Has that been confirmed? Has that been, that's been confirmed that the nuclear facilities have

00:07:42.900 been pulverized? I mean, I know they, they claimed that last time.

00:07:46.180 No, but the ballistic missiles, the, the conventional missiles have been either eradicated or they've shot

00:07:52.060 their last one, it seems. I mean, they really, it really seems that they're, they don't have much

00:07:55.780 capacity left. All of that's good for Israel. That's neither here nor there really for the U.S.

00:08:01.500 I'm just, I'm just saying that we, the way we went into this and the incompetence that surrounded so

00:08:07.080 many features of this from our side, not, not Israel's side. If at the end of the day, there really

00:08:13.540 is no fundamental reset in Iran and we're just left still trying to negotiate on some level around

00:08:18.780 their nuclear aspirations, I think that's a terrible outcome, right? So that, that's to worry,

00:08:23.560 worth worrying about. Yeah. You've said you don't want Iran to get a nuke, but you've also said that

00:08:28.880 you don't want American boots on the ground. If push comes to shove, which are you willing to let

00:08:32.960 go of? The boots on the ground part. I just know that we can't have jihadists with nukes. I mean,

00:08:38.040 that's just, you, that you can boil down the core of a sane foreign policy on this topic to that

00:08:44.020 sentence, right? If it's a jihadist regime that is within reach of nukes, send in the troops,

00:08:50.480 right? Do whatever you have to do to stop that from happening, right? So how we do that, I mean,

00:08:55.960 again, we should have allies, we should have gone to Congress, we should have made the case for this.

00:09:00.760 And I think, you know, I've always said, and I think I first got this idea from the Atlantic writer,

00:09:06.840 Mark Bowden, I think, you know, maybe 20 years ago. It seems to me that much of this should be

00:09:11.780 covert, right? I don't know, I don't know why we ever have to take credit for anything. I think

00:09:15.720 we're at war with jihadism, full stop. We will be for the rest of our lives. Anyone who doesn't

00:09:21.720 understand how jihadism is different from any other enemy we have, or really have ever had,

00:09:26.660 doesn't understand jihadism. So, I mean, it makes an absolute mockery of any negotiation,

00:09:32.200 any notion of deterrence, I mean, to say nothing of nuclear deterrence. You're dealing with avowedly

00:09:37.560 suicidal people who are not bluffing. And they're not only, it's not, it's not only that they're willing

00:09:42.680 to die, the crucial quorum of them want to die, right? And if you don't believe that, again,

00:09:47.660 you're simply ignorant about jihadism and haven't been paying attention to the last, you know, 25

00:09:52.140 years at least of what's been happening in the world. So, it's a total deal breaker. Nukes with

00:09:57.220 jihadists, just, that cannot happen, right? So, wherever it seems to be happening, we need to send

00:10:03.420 in the troops, whatever that looks like, whether that's robots in the end, or special forces, or some

00:10:08.600 combination of, you know, many things that seem different from our old misadventures that were

00:10:14.040 just boots on the ground. That's fine. But we need a relentlessly intrusive policy with respect to

00:10:21.540 jihadism and nuclear projects. Okay, I'm trying to read this chat here that just came in. He says,

00:10:27.260 people in the chat are pushing back on Sam earlier, saying that he has no reason to believe the bombs

00:10:31.840 aren't being dropped accurately, even though the Trump admin is leading the war. How about the girls'

00:10:37.000 school getting bombed? Well, obviously, I'm not talking about the girls' school. So, yes,

00:10:41.960 that was a catastrophe and obviously a mistake, right? I mean, anyone who thinks we did that on

00:10:46.740 purpose is a moron. So, I mean, you literally need not listen to another word out of the mouth of

00:10:52.740 anyone who's speaking as though that was intentional, right? I mean, that harms our interests

00:10:58.360 as colossally as anything we could possibly do. And the same is true of Israel. So, the idea that

00:11:04.440 that's somehow part of our policy to kill school girls by the hundreds, that's insane. But it's

00:11:10.140 awful that that happened and it was clearly based on some error of, you know, intelligence or targeting

00:11:15.800 or both. But generally speaking, I mean, we and the Israelis have killed so much of the leadership

00:11:21.580 of the regime. I mean, that part sounds like it's out of some unbelievable movie. And it sounds like

00:11:29.240 we are successfully degrading their capacity in all kinds of ways, but not sufficient to keep

00:11:34.880 the Strait of Hormuz open, right? So, that part, if that was surprising to us, that's another sign of

00:11:40.420 our incompetence. Yeah. I just think that the real issue there is, I don't think most people really

00:11:46.820 believe we did it on purpose. I think it's the mismanagement and just why it was so difficult just

00:11:50.640 to say, yeah, yeah, we, of course we, what you just said, we would never have done that on purpose.

00:11:54.820 It was accidental. We, you know, this is tragic. Well, yeah, the messaging around this, we're in

00:11:59.840 the hands of amoral, you know, truly awful human beings who are running our country, right? I mean,

00:12:05.260 and that has a consequence, right? Trump can't credibly step in front of a microphone and say

00:12:10.440 anything compassionate about anything for any purpose, right? Because everyone knows that he's

00:12:16.220 simply, he's at minimum neurologically injured in some way so that, so it's not to be a normal person

00:12:22.520 in that regard. And so it is with, you know, Pete Hegseth and the other cartoon characters who are

00:12:27.380 in our government. So, all of that's terrible. I mean, there's no, I mean, you're not going to get

00:12:32.740 to the back of me in feeling that these are the wrong people to be doing this very important and

00:12:39.100 risky job. But that doesn't suggest that destroying this regime wouldn't be a good thing. And the other

00:12:46.920 thing to point out about critics of this war is they never seem to reckon with the widespread

00:12:52.000 Iranian support for the war. What are you going to say, what can you say to all the Iranians who

00:12:57.800 are urging us onward in destroying this regime, right? I mean, what about their interests? What

00:13:05.040 about the compassion for their loved ones who don't want to live in a theocracy, right? Which you,

00:13:12.000 the critic of this war, wouldn't want to live under either. People are acting as though we attacked a

00:13:18.100 sovereign country. They're acting as though we attacked Greenland, right? Like, that's the

00:13:23.020 perception of the ethics here. I mean, this is just a totally unjustifiable, unethical, imperialist

00:13:29.080 adventure by a, you know, country that is now governed by a sociopath, right? Now, we may be

00:13:35.280 governed by a sociopath, but all of the previous statements are wrong, right? This is nothing like

00:13:40.240 Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This is nothing like our taking Greenland through use of force.

00:13:46.860 That the Iranian regime was a terrorist regime for as long as most of us have been alive.

00:13:52.500 And some feedback from the chat, if, um, isn't the war just creating more jihadists?

00:13:57.620 No, I've never bought that. I mean, yes, I'm sure there are some specific individuals who could

00:14:02.840 tell that story of their radicalization. I mean, I'm not saying that's an impossible

00:14:06.500 way for the dominoes to fall, but generally speaking, that's not how you get jihadism,

00:14:11.300 right? You get jihadism by the, by the indoctrination into a specific, you know,

00:14:17.580 religious beliefs and, and those beliefs spread, right? People find those beliefs compelling

00:14:22.620 for a variety of reasons. And, and if no, no other reason that they're just, they get drummed into the

00:14:28.420 heads of kids since the moment they can speak, right? So this is what's happened in, among the

00:14:33.220 Palestinians, right? I mean, the Palestinians are a highly radicalized culture because they have

00:14:38.940 taught more than one generation of kids that this is the way the world is, right? I mean,

00:14:43.260 you literally have four-year-olds being raised to aspire to be martyrs. You know, this is in the

00:14:48.860 curriculum in, in UN-funded schools in the Palestinian territory. So it's just, it's a

00:14:53.560 cultural problem. It's a religious problem. It's a theological problem. It's a problem that the Muslim

00:14:57.940 world has to sort out. I mean, because the real problem is jihadism is not a distortion of the faith.

00:15:03.100 It's just, it's at the core of the faith. I'm not saying that all Muslims are jihadists, but they're,

00:15:07.940 it is hard to do the rhetorical work to disavow jihadism and pull it up by its roots and still

00:15:15.640 sound like you are an orthodox Muslim. I mean, it's very, it's not, it's not an easy project.

00:15:21.580 I'm not even sure it's a viable project in the end. So I'm not, I'm definitely worried about this

00:15:27.120 slow-moving collision we're going to keep having with, with Islamic orthodoxy. But we should point out

00:15:34.240 that fairly doctrinaire Muslims are still trying to do it, even in states that are not at all

00:15:40.880 democratic or open. I mean, so, you know, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, I mean, they're disavowing their

00:15:46.380 hardline clerics, and I believe ceasing to export jihadism the way they were. I mean, Saudi was

00:15:53.040 funding jihadist-inspired mosques all over the world for the longest time. I believe they have

00:15:58.640 rein that in, or at least that's been reported. All of those changes are good, and so, and those

00:16:03.400 changes are possible, and it's pretty clear that the UAE doesn't want to become a, an ISIS-like

00:16:09.320 society, and all of that's good. But the problem is there's a very obvious place to stand within

00:16:16.260 Islam to look at the UAE project and say, well, this is all just worldliness and corruption and

00:16:21.300 apostasy, and the real Islam teaches exactly what the Islamic State has been saying all along,

00:16:27.060 and we have to deal with that. Speaking of that, is that true information? Is it the UAE that

00:16:31.180 no longer is funding college education to the UK for fear of radicalization? Yeah, they're afraid

00:16:37.500 that their students will be radicalized by the Muslims at Oxford and Cambridge and the London

00:16:43.380 School of Economics, which tells you just how far this problem has spread. So, you know, convict the

00:16:49.720 UAE of Islamophobia, if you like. That would be amusing. Yeah. It seems many on the right and left are

00:16:54.780 united against this war for different reasons, obviously, but which side's reasons were you

00:16:59.200 more? I think the left's, frankly. I mean, the rights, the America First dogmatism of the right

00:17:05.680 and the anti-Semitism, the anti-Israel position of the right, it is what it is. I mean, it's easier

00:17:12.160 for me to take the measure of. What's on the left is just fundamental moral confusion about everything

00:17:19.320 I just said, right? I mean, they won't acknowledge that jihadism is even a problem. I mean, everything

00:17:23.720 I just said is just pure Islamophobia and racism, as though that charge made any sense. I mean, the

00:17:28.700 left is, the left has been gulled by Islamists. The left has, the left, I mean, we've got people

00:17:34.520 who jihadists would actually massacre if they had a chance, essentially championing the cause of

00:17:43.060 jihadists, right? On our most elite university campuses, you know, in a wide variety of organizations,

00:17:50.840 you know, left of center in the West. But the level of moral confusion is just astounding. So

00:17:56.700 these are, the useful idiots are on the left. I guess there's some useful idiots on the right

00:18:01.440 for other reasons, but I don't know, just, again, the asymmetry here is worth noting. On the right,

00:18:08.320 you know, the cultural capture on the left has been of our most elite institutions, right? I mean,

00:18:14.080 the moral confusion you see is in places like the New York Times and at Harvard University and,

00:18:20.000 you know, in foundations and, you know, it's just the employees of, of, you know, all high-status

00:18:26.360 companies. I mean, this is, it's not, we're not talking about Breitbart and, and Fox News and

00:18:31.980 organs of culture that advertise their confusion with, you know, with every breath. These are our

00:18:38.700 best institutions that have been vitiated by this form of anti-Semitism, this form of moral confusion,

00:18:44.320 this form of apology for a theocracy and atrocity. I mean, if you, if you walk through the front door

00:18:49.880 of a mainstream liberal, liberal organization and start arguing for the rights of women and girls

00:18:55.680 in the Muslim world, you are immediately painted as a racist Islamophobe, right? I mean, that's the

00:19:02.520 center of gravity, uh, left of center in, um, in our, again, our most elite institutions. So that's

00:19:07.420 just, that's god-awful. How do you explain that? What, I mean, what do you think they would say if

00:19:11.140 you just pointed that out to them and said, let me just explain to you what life is like under that

00:19:15.080 rule? Does that bother you? Well, I've, I've been in this situation before. I mean, for 25 years, I've,

00:19:20.800 I've found myself in these conversations face-to-face ever since September 11th. It's been a long time

00:19:25.460 since I've, you know, submitted to one in, in person, but no, I mean, I would be at academic

00:19:31.220 conferences and I, you, I would say something disparaging of the Taliban and that proved

00:19:35.360 controversial, right? I mean, it's, it's just, uh, you literally meet... And if you tried to walk

00:19:39.940 somebody on the other side through this logic... Yeah, you, you, you get just an utter stonewalling

00:19:45.820 and, and kind of malfunctioning of the human brain. I mean, it's, it becomes impossible to have the

00:19:50.820 conversation. I mean, it's just, yeah, it's just, there's a double standard etched into,

00:19:55.460 this pseudo-morality, which is, it's like there's, the utility function is here, I think,

00:20:02.800 see everything in terms of white supremacy and, and oppressor-oppressed relationships and avoid

00:20:09.380 racism at all costs, right? That's kind of the, the master value. And so any criticism of, of Islam,

00:20:17.060 even of theocrats, even of theocrats who are killing women for showing their hair, even theocrats

00:20:23.220 are performing, you know, genital mutilation on, on girls, if you criticize them, you are at a minimum

00:20:29.340 risking being racist. Again, that makes no sense, that claim. And certainly Islamophobic, right? So

00:20:36.060 that's where the conversation stops. We can't care about those girls. We can't care about those women.

00:20:40.680 Your pretension to care about those girls and women is just a cover for your racism and Islam,

00:20:44.980 and Islamophobia. And as a white guy, you can't be talking about this at all anyway, right? So the

00:20:50.140 conversation's over before it starts. And these are the most maddening encounters I've ever had in

00:20:55.200 my life. Literally had conversations with, with women who have PhDs, who are, you know, who live

00:21:02.400 happily in the West, who are open-minded about, you know, female genital mutilation and, and the life

00:21:08.040 of women in burkas in Afghanistan. It's just, it's mind-boggling. Okay. So you're getting pushback

00:21:13.160 from the chat. Mainstream progressives do not believe that stuff, Sam. I've met them face to face.

00:21:17.680 With the extreme left. Okay. So, well, then we're just talking about words. So then show me your

00:21:22.260 mainstream progressive who isn't going to think the last 15 minutes was just a, an eruptation of

00:21:28.660 Islamophobia. Uh, and then I'll grant that that person's sane, but just in, in the ledger of your

00:21:34.560 imagination, imagine all the people who think that what I just expressed was white identity politics

00:21:42.820 or racism or Islamophobia, right? Anyone who's, who, who will, who check any of those boxes,

00:21:49.340 that's who I'm talking about. Are those, are those mainstream progressives or not?

00:21:52.900 Yeah. I don't know. Should we, uh, let's just, uh, pause for a second. Just, uh, do we want to see

00:21:57.000 if that person would like to lay out the view a little bit more clearly so that you can respond to it?

00:22:02.580 Oh yeah. I would, I would love any follow-up on that. I mean, I just, it's like either you're going

00:22:05.920 to understand what jihadism is and you're going to understand the complicity of confused leftists

00:22:13.260 and Muslim apologists who are not themselves jihadists, but, you know, many of whom are

00:22:18.160 Islamists and many of whom are just sufficiently conservative and identified with their, you know,

00:22:22.960 religious sectarianism such that they're going to criticize the Danish cartoonists who are being

00:22:27.440 hunted by maniacs, not the maniacs who are hunting them, right? They're going to, you know, when the

00:22:32.320 Charlie Hebdo cartoonists get slaughtered in their conference room, their first question is going to

00:22:37.720 be, well, what were those cartoons? What did they draw? Right? Yeah. So I'm talking about people

00:22:43.120 like Glenn Greenwald. It's a very large footprint in our culture of confused people.

00:22:48.820 All right. Well, unfortunately the person has decided that they do not want to get a follow-up.

00:22:51.680 If anybody else in the audience, yeah, anybody else in the audience, um, you'd be helping us here

00:22:57.280 actually, if you could, um, represent that viewpoint. Well, so there's no way I can satisfy

00:23:03.040 everyone in the audience on this point, because I, I've, I recognize that on some level, it's not

00:23:08.920 about rational argument because we're not, we're not going to agree about what is real in the world,

00:23:15.160 right? So if I, the moment I say, okay, jihadists can't get nuclear weapons and here's why,

00:23:20.280 what I'm dealing with, with a significant percentage of the audience is people who think that jihadists only

00:23:25.200 exist in my imagination, right? Like there's no, there really are no people who think they're going

00:23:30.440 to get to paradise by blowing themselves up on an airplane. That's not real. That's, these people

00:23:35.820 are either, you know, mentally ill or they, they have other motives, you know, they've been so mistreated

00:23:40.520 by the Israelis or by Western powers, or there's some other explanation. It's not religion. It's not

00:23:45.760 sincere belief in paradise. So insofar as I can't land that argument with some number of people,

00:23:52.580 those people will never accept anything else I have to say on this topic, but those people are

00:23:57.040 delusional, right? I mean, they're just simply, they're not in contact with what's really happening

00:24:00.940 in our world. And this has been obvious at least since September 11th, but it was obviously obvious

00:24:06.120 long before that. Well, while we're waiting to see if we're going to get any feedback, speaking of

00:24:11.340 delusional, I want you to play, I'm sorry, I want you to watch a clip of a meme video released from

00:24:16.060 the White House. I don't know if you've seen these. Kirby, can you load that for us to watch?

00:24:22.580 Have you seen this? I haven't seen this one, but I've seen ones like this. Yeah.

00:24:36.680 This is obviously appalling.

00:24:43.020 All right. We don't need to keep watching any further. You get it.

00:24:45.620 So, I mean, so this is the kind of thing that totally discredits us morally. And that wasn't

00:24:51.780 even the worst one. I've seen ones that were even more offensive than that. But I mean,

00:24:55.360 how does that look alongside our inadvertently killing over a hundred kids in school? I mean,

00:25:03.620 there's no apology adequate for this behavior. These people belong in prison. I mean, if we don't

00:25:09.220 have laws against being this stupid and odious, we should. I mean, it's just, I can't believe this

00:25:14.420 is our country, right? I mean, that's the official White House ex-feed. There's no forgiveness for this.

00:25:19.820 I mean, this is just an absolute desecration of our country on the world stage. I mean,

00:25:26.020 this is a Trump and basically all of the loyalists who at this point, who are in his

00:25:31.920 administration, have just set fire to our reputation, to American soft power and to our

00:25:37.740 influence in the world, to our moral standing, such as it was. I mean, it's just, I don't know how long

00:25:42.660 it'll take us to get back to zero on this front, but it might not happen in the lifetime of anyone

00:25:48.720 listening to us.

00:25:50.060 Yeah. Well, in your replacement for that comment that I've been waiting on, I think I've selected

00:25:55.740 a question from earlier, so we can just jump to that, which I think, you know, might address some

00:25:59.820 of it. I've often appreciated the way you bring nuance and moral clarity to difficult topics, which

00:26:04.500 is why I've been surprised by what seems to me like a lack of similar nuance in your analysis of

00:26:09.400 the Israel-Palestine conflict and the broader regional escalation with Iran. You argue that

00:26:14.560 groups like Hamas and regimes like Iran represent a uniquely dangerous ideology that may justify

00:26:20.340 extraordinary measures to stop them. What principle in your moral framework actually limits the violence

00:26:25.620 that can be used against such an enemy? And at what point would you say the response itself has

00:26:30.240 become morally unacceptable regardless of the ideology of the opponent?

00:26:34.380 Well, there's a certain amount of collateral damage that is unacceptable, clearly. Like, so,

00:26:39.920 you know, in the limit, I don't advocate that we blow up the entire world so as to kill all the

00:26:45.980 jihadists, right? So there's some place between a sniper's round targeted into the head of the

00:26:54.360 appropriate target and killing everyone on earth that I'm going to land as, okay, this is starting to

00:27:01.440 seem like too much collateral damage in our efforts to purge, you know, our world or any given society

00:27:08.400 of its jihadist threat. I don't know what the algorithm is to decide that in advance, right? I mean,

00:27:14.640 I think we have to be as careful as we can possibly be while still successfully defeating our enemies

00:27:23.600 when we're at war. One can only hope that better technology is going to make us more and more careful

00:27:30.700 and more and more precise and that, you know, previous degrees of collateral damage will begin

00:27:37.020 to seem less and less conscionable in current and future wars because, again, it becomes possible to

00:27:42.980 be more careful and more precise. I mean, I don't think we could fight a war the way we fought World

00:27:47.860 War II now because it would be wrong. I mean, in retrospect, much of what we did, at least by some

00:27:54.740 accounts, it looks wrong. But, I mean, I could imagine under, you know, a certain case of emergency,

00:27:59.880 we'll, you know, we could stumble into even a less surgical type of war because of the nature of the

00:28:05.520 enemy. I mean, this is what's so troublesome about nuclear weapons, right? And the logic of mutually

00:28:12.320 assured destruction. I mean, we're living in a world where we're pretending that it's thinkable

00:28:16.660 because it is actually policy that if we find that Russia has launched a first strike against us,

00:28:22.320 we are going to return fire, killing, you know, whatever, tens of millions of people at a minimum,

00:28:28.560 but perhaps, you know, hundreds of millions of people for no purpose, right? That's the deterrence,

00:28:33.960 right? That is the nature of our deterrence doctrine. It says we will launch, if launched upon,

00:28:39.460 that doesn't make any moral sense to me, actually. I don't see that. But it's the only thing that

00:28:44.460 gives deterrence its reality, psychologically, right? The fact that the suspicion, or at least

00:28:50.180 the uncertainty as to whether or not we'll do that, right? The claim that we will do it and

00:28:53.840 the uncertainty as to whether or not we're bluffing, all of this goes completely out the window in a

00:28:58.100 world where jihadists have nukes, by the way, right? So, like, this is the only reason why nuclear

00:29:02.780 deterrence is a thing at all is because all parties who have nukes, in fact, don't want to die

00:29:09.040 and don't want to see their children die. That's what makes mutually assured destruction

00:29:13.760 a doctrine that plausibly kept us perched on the brink, not having a nuclear war, which is, in fact,

00:29:21.340 what has happened so far, and probably not having a conventional war because of the risk of

00:29:27.100 escalation to nuclear war. So, you could even argue that this awful circumstance where this

00:29:32.860 sword of Damocles is hanging over everybody's head kept us out of a conventional version of World

00:29:38.060 War III so far, and that's a good thing, that only makes sense if your enemy doesn't want to die

00:29:45.400 and you're convinced your enemy doesn't want to die. And in the case of even crazy enemies, like

00:29:51.440 the various autocrats who have ruled North Korea, you know, each of the three I can think of seem to

00:29:57.660 be nuts. They weren't nuts in the way that suggested that they want to die, right? But the moment we're in

00:30:03.180 the presence of someone who can reach us with nukes, who we're convinced really does want to die,

00:30:07.900 right? And he's surrounded by people who want to die because they are, in fact, jihadists, you know,

00:30:13.440 they're a proper death cult, that changes everything, right? So, we can't let ourselves get into that

00:30:18.540 situation. And crucially, the Muslim world has to recognize that they can't let the world get into

00:30:25.640 that situation. I mean, no one has a greater appreciation of this than Muslims, right? So, it's not going to be

00:30:33.160 news to real Muslims who understand the doctrine that jihadism is a thing and a sincere belief in

00:30:38.780 martyrdom and paradise is a thing, right? This is only confusing to Western secular liberals who think

00:30:45.000 that, you know, even suicide bombers on some level may be bluffing. No. So, we have to foresee this and

00:30:51.380 avoid it. And the only way to avoid it is to ensure that jihadists continue to lose. And this goes back

00:30:57.520 to the question earlier of, am I afraid that we simply make more jihadists every time we intrude

00:31:02.860 into a Muslim society and kill them? Well, no. I think the thing that really makes jihadists

00:31:12.120 is the perception of jihadist success, right? The thing that really created a lot of jihadists was

00:31:18.900 the rise of ISIS and the birth of the Islamic State. I mean, the announcement that there was a caliphate,

00:31:24.860 right? I mean, there you saw the jihadists and aspiring jihadists come out of the woodwork

00:31:29.700 and some tens of thousands of them flocked to Syria and Iraq to join the party, even from Western

00:31:36.600 countries, right? Islamic triumphalism gives you jihadism, right? So, jihadists have to lose,

00:31:43.080 right? It has to be, it has to be obviously a failed project. And the only people that can make it

00:31:48.600 truly in the limit, a failed project, are other Muslims, right? I mean, this is why, you know,

00:31:55.100 honestly, we need a civil war in the Muslim world against jihadism. That's the thing that will have

00:31:59.680 to happen, ultimately. We need a version of Islam that will not tolerate this species of fanaticism.

00:32:05.520 And that may, that may be coming. I mean, I'm certainly hopeful that that is coming because

00:32:11.380 that's, that's the only thing that is not, that doesn't have, I mean, I'll grant you that having

00:32:16.340 a Western face on this, a non-Muslim face on this, having the infidels show up and start killing your

00:32:22.560 fellow Muslims, that's provocative for obvious religious reasons. So in the end, it has to be

00:32:28.960 other Muslims who are fighting jihadists.

00:32:30.760 You don't think there's any safety in your thinking around, you know, the higher up these

00:32:34.560 guys get, the less likely they are to want to die. And maybe they're just sending their

00:32:37.820 underlings. But I mean, is there any example of anybody at the highest levels wanting to die

00:32:42.240 and exhibiting that?

00:32:43.600 Well, yeah. I mean, I think even in this case, many of these people haven't taken the kind of

00:32:48.960 precautions they would take if they cared about whether they were dying or not. I mean, this is,

00:32:53.520 you know, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, he clearly had the courage of his convictions. I mean,

00:32:59.760 he's not somebody who's maximizing his chances of, you know, he wasn't taking a plane out so that he

00:33:07.320 could sit in a villa somewhere and ride it out. We overestimate the pleasure of being rich and

00:33:15.540 gluttonous and safe if we think that in every case, you know, having access to a good life

00:33:22.720 is a remedy for jihadism. It's just not. I mean, people, these are sincere religious beliefs and

00:33:29.340 sincere concerns about the existential peril of not being right with God, right? There's one way to

00:33:36.860 get into paradise directly and bypass the day of judgment if you're Muslim. It's to be a martyr.

00:33:42.280 This is not a trivial thing within Islam. And yeah, so I mean, just, you know, you have to price in the

00:33:49.540 sincerity of these beliefs. People really believe this stuff. Now, can you find a jihadist who's

00:33:54.900 actually mentally ill? Of course. Can you find a jihadist who was only led there because, you know,

00:34:01.000 someone said they were going to kill his mom if he didn't, you know, strap on a suicide vest? Sure,

00:34:06.440 I'm sure those cases exist. But jihadism is real. It's a real religious movement. You know, if you say,

00:34:12.760 if you want to separate it from mainstream Islam, fine, then call it what it is. It's a legitimate death

00:34:18.260 cult, you know, that has an extreme set of beliefs about the moral structure of this universe and how

00:34:24.400 to live within it and what happens after death and what's going to happen, you know, at the end of

00:34:29.660 days and what you have to do in the meantime to be right with all of that. I mean, this is heavily

00:34:34.720 prescriptive and it's sincerely believed by, we don't know how many numbers of people, but a non-trivial

00:34:41.260 number. Okay. I want to get to the next question. I and many of the other commenters want to hear an

00:34:46.620 intelligent and in-depth nuanced conversation about the Israel-Palestine issue, an intellectually

00:34:51.380 honest conversation, even if very challenging for you and for the listeners. Some months ago,

00:34:56.300 in a coda to an episode, Jaron and Griffin strongly and respectfully argued for having a guest who can

00:35:00.760 speak from a deep well of understanding about the Israel-Palestine issue. You agreed to look for

00:35:05.440 a guest who has extensive understanding of the issue and who is also aware of the dangers of jihadism.

00:35:10.440 How is that search going? There are a number of writer's historians. Let's hear the names.

00:35:13.680 If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at

00:35:18.180 samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense

00:35:23.460 podcast. The Making Sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support. And you can

00:35:29.860 subscribe now at samharris.org.

00:35:32.260 Samharris.org.

00:35:34.760 Bye.

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - March 18, 2026

#465 — More From Sam： Iran, Jihadism, Conspiracism, AI Disruption, the Manosphere, and More

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