Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1673 Scott Adams： More Things We Are Learning About The Ukrainian Invasion. Yikes

00:00:00.000 good morning everybody welcome to the highlight of civilization called coffee with scott adams

00:00:12.320 now we might be talking about the ukraine war because i guess the pandemic's over so it's time

00:00:19.640 to talk about that but first let's take it up a notch shall we yes and all you need is a cup

00:00:26.800 a mug or a glass of tank of chalice time canteen jug a flask a vessel any kind fill it with your

00:00:32.340 favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine of the day

00:00:39.580 thing makes everything better it's called the simultaneous sip go

00:00:43.660 ah yeah that's so good so so good

00:00:53.880 i had a suggestion uh the other day that i should do a um an interview slash competition with snoop dog

00:01:06.780 to see who could pass out uh during during an interview first if you know what i mean

00:01:15.180 i think that would be hilarious do you think snoop would take my invitation if i had a split screen

00:01:20.040 and i said here's the deal we're just going to do what we do if you know what i mean

00:01:26.040 if you know what i mean wink wink while the interview is going on

00:01:30.100 and uh we're going to see if my questions get dumber than his answers so we'll we'll see who can

00:01:37.840 who can hang in there longer i think i could take him 0.73

00:01:41.480 and by the way me interviewing snoop dog that should be pay for pay-per-view

00:01:50.540 because that because i think it would be the best interview he ever gave

00:01:54.280 something tells me well once again the science is pointing toward my opinion um there's yet another

00:02:05.600 study which we don't we don't trust any studies but they're fun to talk about uh published in the

00:02:13.760 esteemed journal nature which is a pretty good one i understand and it says uh uh basically any

00:02:21.080 amount of alcohol damages your brain that's the base the basic thing is that any amount of alcohol

00:02:28.700 damages your brain and they can detect it now apparently now i'm not so sure that they have

00:02:36.540 cause and effect right because one of the things they do is they say okay we looked at these people

00:02:42.700 who had you know one beer a day and their brains were short were smaller than or they looked like what

00:02:49.800 uh the brains appeared two years older than those who drank only half a beer so if you had two beers

00:02:56.700 your brain looked two years older than if you had half a beer but something tells me there are

00:03:03.500 probably a lot of things going on with the people who drink more alcohol compared to the people who

00:03:08.400 don't am i right because at the very least some other people might be reading books while you're

00:03:16.360 drinking if that were the only difference one day a week you drink and maybe one day a week somebody

00:03:22.940 else reads a book i don't know i think you'd see a difference in the brains after a while wouldn't

00:03:27.160 you it doesn't mean that the uh it doesn't necessarily mean that the alcohol is shrinking your brain

00:03:32.560 could mean that the reading increases it or keeps it younger so i would imagine there are lots of

00:03:38.860 correlations that they didn't pick up in this study just guessing but it agrees with me so i tell you

00:03:44.000 about it well let's talk about all the fake news we'll start with trump related fake news

00:03:51.760 i call it a fake news that trump called putin a genius although it actually happened it's fake news

00:03:59.900 but it literally happened and the fake part is the context they put it in so here's trump explaining

00:04:08.240 in his own words the next day after he got some criticism for calling putin smart i guess he was

00:04:14.380 talking to a fundraiser at mar-a-lago and he said uh they say trump said putin smart i mean he's taking

00:04:21.660 over a country for two dollars worth of sanctions trump told the crowd at the fundraiser i'd say that's

00:04:27.640 pretty smart he's taking over a country really a vast vast location a great piece of land with lots of

00:04:33.740 people and he's just walking right in now obviously it's going to be harder than walking right in and

00:04:39.280 the sanctions are going to be more than two dollars so this is a little in a sense you know he was using

00:04:45.800 dated information when he made his opinion but i don't disagree with his opinion do you

00:04:51.540 who who would disagree with the opinion under the assumption that putin could just walk in and take

00:04:59.680 over the country now that turns out not to be true it's going to be way harder than putin might

00:05:05.560 have imagined but if your assumption was that it was an easy easy takeover which a lot of people

00:05:12.300 thought in the beginning thought it would take two days if you have that assumption that it would be

00:05:17.220 smart but evil to do this wouldn't you say it's not nobody asked trump if he was if putin is evil

00:05:26.520 right ask him the question mr trump you said you think putin is smart do you think he's also evil

00:05:34.780 if he if trump says no he's fine not only is he smart but he's completely moral and ethical too

00:05:42.460 well then i think you'd have some good complaints about trump but if trump says yeah he's making smart

00:05:49.120 moves based on the information he has but he's also evil then that's not too far from what people

00:05:57.140 thought a week ago today i think i'll bet trump would revise his opinion today i'll bet as of today

00:06:05.300 trump would say you know this doesn't look so smart anymore because he's not going to get he's not

00:06:10.280 going to get ukraine on the cheap so i'd like to see you an update on trump's opinion based on new

00:06:15.920 information here's another for the trump was right all along file do you remember the

00:06:22.840 saudi arabia and the prince crown prince allegedly um ordered the assassination of khashoggi

00:06:32.380 and the world said trump why are you not coming harder on saudi arabia why are you not pushing harder

00:06:41.340 on saudi arabia do you remember what i said at the time when trump was not pushing hard on saudi arabia

00:06:47.780 i said that's the right play because basically now saudi or saudi arabia owns you a owes you a favor

00:06:56.840 that's how it works you do somebody a favor that was a pretty big one basically trump not going hard

00:07:06.620 as saudi arabia for the khashoggi thing that was a favor it felt like it to me at the time it felt

00:07:12.920 like it was a personal favor and i think trump collected not only did he collect by getting the

00:07:20.660 abraham accords through one of the you know greatest diplomatic accomplishments accomplishments of all

00:07:27.440 time but now saudi arabia is uh let's see um how did i lose that story they're they're talking about

00:07:40.600 maybe being an ally with israel someday so the crown prince is actually saying you know maybe maybe

00:07:46.800 someday we should be thinking more about israel as an ally

00:07:49.620 i think i think trump played this exactly right now the murder of khashoggi may have been a horrible

00:07:59.420 brutal thing that nobody can individually be in favor of of course but if you were playing the the real

00:08:06.820 politic thing where you know it's a dirty world i think trump played the dirty world just right

00:08:12.900 am i wrong don't don't you think that trump played the dirty world you know where nothing's perfect

00:08:20.420 and there are killers in the world and it's just not a clean world i think he played it right because

00:08:26.540 he ended up with saudi arabia largely where we want them to be in terms of allies in terms of how they

00:08:35.860 would treat israel in the future especially i don't know i i would say that this is one of trump's

00:08:41.400 greatest moves and will never be recognized as such he'll probably be criticized for not you know

00:08:48.720 not being harder on saudi arabia at the same time to me it looks clear that was the right move in

00:08:54.120 retrospect all right do you remember the tragic story of the stanford stock soccer star a young woman katie

00:09:04.240 meyer who died um and initially there was no information on how she died didn't everybody

00:09:11.820 think that was a vaccination death because on social media there was this you know this indication

00:09:19.560 sort of a hint oh and then suddenly there were all these stories about uh all the athletes dying from

00:09:26.620 vaccinations which is all debunked by the way there is no excess athletes dying from vaccinations that's

00:09:33.840 completely debunked but it turns out we get an update and she died of suicide so um you know it's

00:09:42.380 it's twice as tragic if it's suicide i guess um and you think about this this is somebody who had

00:09:50.640 everything she was healthy she was at stanford she was a soccer star we we've got a problem in this

00:10:01.200 world with uh mental health that's um as big as you think that problem is it's probably bigger than

00:10:07.700 you think like i think mental health is a giant problem you probably think it's a giant problem

00:10:12.920 too but however big you think it is i think it's maybe five times that like i don't think we're even

00:10:19.540 close to appreciating the mental health problem that's that's a bigger pandemic than the pandemic

00:10:26.360 all right here's some uh uk updates that i find interesting the second biggest oil company i think

00:10:33.500 cnn was reporting this uh luck oil has called for an end of the war no no they're not directly

00:10:41.240 criticizing putin that would be dangerous but apparently it's noteworthy that they're calling

00:10:46.200 for an end to the violence without you know blaming anybody because apparently the value of their stock

00:10:52.400 has lost 99 of its value essentially every public company in russia is worthless now

00:11:03.280 literally literally worthless meaning nobody would buy it now i guess i guess there's some you know big

00:11:11.200 companies in america are going to gamble on some of the some of the depressed assets but that's just a

00:11:17.040 gamble that's not really an investment you could call it an investment if it's part of a big portfolio

00:11:23.120 i'll give you that though um but really a russian company maybe all of them have lost 99 of their value

00:11:32.480 now do you think that the russian public is now unaware that uh putin's got them in a little trouble

00:11:38.400 i think these sanctions are going to work way better than all the experts predicted

00:11:45.200 so so far the experts told us

00:11:48.480 that putin would just walk into ukraine in two days into kiev expert the military experts have been

00:11:56.480 100 wrong am i right i don't believe there were any military experts saying well it's gonna be a long slog

00:12:02.720 i don't recall seeing that once did you did did any any notable experts say russia's gonna get bogged

00:12:10.480 down there i don't remember seeing it somebody says yes there might have been it's being said now of

00:12:19.120 course now it's being said but before the actual invasion how many military experts said that they

00:12:25.120 were going to get bogged down the way they are besides me i mean i said it so i think the military

00:12:32.400 experts were largely completely wrong so far uh although i suspect they're going to be right

00:12:38.960 about russia flattening ukraine unfortunately um

00:12:48.560 so i i think um i think putin is going to be losing the persuasion war even within russia because

00:12:54.640 once you do this much damage to the economy and i guess i guess uh even the oil and energy segment

00:13:00.880 in russia that was carved out to be free of the sanctions nobody even wants to touch the part

00:13:06.640 that's carved out because i figure it won't stay carved out which is a good play right they're thinking

00:13:12.320 it's too risky to even deal with russia on the stuff that's not illegal because it might be illegal later

00:13:19.680 that would be a wise risk management decision

00:13:22.400 um so rt russia today which is basically a russian propaganda site which full disclosure i have appeared

00:13:33.520 on uh back in probably 2016 or 17 maybe now at the time i didn't know it was a you know russian propaganda

00:13:45.520 but i was just doing everybody's propaganda i also appeared on cnn which i also think is

00:13:51.920 propaganda so i've appeared on msnbc rt cnn and as long as they showed my interview without editing

00:14:00.400 which they did because it was live i'll appear almost anywhere in fact i think i would yeah i

00:14:08.080 probably would i think i would appear on russia state media if they invited me as long as they

00:14:15.120 showed my live interview because i get to say what i get to say i think i'd do that so scott adams

00:14:23.520 media whore it is it a media whore or am i using them for my own purposes because remember it's my opinion

00:14:31.280 it's not their opinion i wouldn't be going on their show to give them their opinion i'd be giving my opinion 0.77

00:14:37.440 why can't i give my opinion anywhere i want

00:14:42.240 um apparently elon musk agrees with me because he's been asked by several nations to block russian

00:14:50.240 propaganda on the starlink network and elon musk says sorry not going to happen unless it's at gunpoint

00:14:58.960 because he's a free speech absolutist and i respect that opinion especially if you're if you've got a

00:15:06.960 network that carries traffic you should be a free speech absolutist um so i respect that even though

00:15:13.520 it has its own set of costs i guess anyway um paul joseph watson tweets that's ironic that rt is being banned

00:15:23.600 for their propaganda when pretty much all of the legacy media is just running one fake story after

00:15:29.760 another about ukraine am i right i think mike serdovich is doing the best job of calling out

00:15:36.240 the media for running just pure ukrainian propaganda like all the stories of the the 13 people on the

00:15:42.480 island that was fake the the ghost of kiev the the ace fighter pilot who's shooting down all the russian

00:15:48.560 jets never happened complete fabrication so most of what you're hearing from ukraine is pure 0.97

00:15:56.960 bullshit and our legacy media is just reporting it like it's true so where do you draw the line 0.88

00:16:06.800 between you know honest mistakes are they you know which part of our media is just uh carrying water for 0.99

00:16:13.840 the cia some of them it certainly looks to me like the cia is directly managing some parts of our

00:16:22.400 media right now it looks like it i mean i don't i don't see the mechanism but it looks like it you

00:16:28.400 know the the output looks like it anyway it's a good question you know who decides who is uh propaganda

00:16:37.840 and what is not when all of it looks like propaganda uh also speaking of serdovich he points out and

00:16:44.000 this is always a good thing to look for all right we're in the fog of war so you expect and you accept

00:16:52.240 that there'll be lots of mistakes made in the reporting correct we we we get that a lot of the

00:16:59.280 early reporting is just going to be totally wrong but we also sort of uncritically accept

00:17:06.400 that they're just mistakes but as mike serdovich points out why do the mistakes always seem to go

00:17:15.120 in one direction meaning that the stories that are incorrect turn out to have been in pro ukraine

00:17:23.600 is it a coincidence that all of the fake news is pro ukraine that would be a pretty big coincidence

00:17:30.640 wouldn't it now it's also possible that's a that my assumption is wrong that the fake news is not

00:17:36.720 all pro ukraine maybe i just see it that way could be could be a perceptual thing so you know throw that

00:17:43.040 in the mix that's a possibility too scott how about it's because russia is evil says says the ukrainian

00:17:52.640 control perhaps maybe allegedly all right a russian tv station that was um essentially

00:18:04.320 decommissioned by russia because i guess they were being too independent about the war they were they

00:18:09.520 were already suspended their operations but i guess they had one final broadcast and they pretended that

00:18:14.960 the entire staff was you know resigning on air to protest um protest the war basically so i guess

00:18:23.280 they all got up and and resigned on live tv in russia that's pretty impactful now it didn't mean anything

00:18:31.840 because they'd already been suspended so wasn't wasn't any work to do anyway

00:18:37.040 um but i think that's pretty meaningful do you think the message is getting through to the russian

00:18:44.080 public i think the the impact on the economy and stuff like this probably is starting to get through

00:18:53.600 but i'll bet you you can't reach 50 of the russian public about 50 of the russian public is impervious

00:19:00.960 to any propaganda um let's say fighting that they're just going to believe the russian the russian side

00:19:10.800 and there's nothing you can do about it and if and how much support does putin need within russia to

00:19:18.160 keep control i don't know the answer to that but if 50 are going to support him no matter what

00:19:26.480 because he can can control the propaganda i don't know that's probably enough to hang on

00:19:31.920 i think he could hang on with 50 popular support because keep in mind if russia does get full control

00:19:39.840 of ukraine the russian public or some part of it may consider this a success what do you think i'm going

00:19:48.800 to say that 50 this is just my impression it's not based on any science or anything my guess is that

00:19:55.120 50 of the russian public at least this would be my low number 50 will decide that putin succeeded and

00:20:04.000 and russia was justified and that it was a good war and a good outcome i say at least 50 will believe

00:20:12.880 that because putin can control the narrative that well now um let's talk about some more of the the

00:20:22.000 fake news and the narrative so greta tunberg did a little selfie today holding a handmade sign in 1.00

00:20:28.480 support of ukraine now how much balls does it take to be greta tunberg and publicly take a selfie

00:20:37.040 saying you're favoring ukraine because although she is not single-handedly responsible she is the biggest

00:20:44.640 name in favor of reducing our energy security i'm not making that up i don't think that's a

00:20:53.200 i don't believe that that's a any kind of a weird interpretation of events i think that's just

00:20:57.760 straightforward she's the voice of climate change climate change is the thing which created uh energy

00:21:05.680 insecurity because the green stuff can't grow fast enough doesn't work all the time you know if the

00:21:11.360 wind does blow the sun isn't out so greta at least as a as a symbol she is really the cause of the 0.97

00:21:20.000 ukraine war because if russia didn't have this much control over energy they never would have been 0.79

00:21:26.160 emboldened to do what they're doing so how much balls does it take for her to say she's in favor of 0.99

00:21:32.480 ukraine she is closer to the cause of the war than the than the solution now again you know i'm using some

00:21:40.560 hyperbole you recognize that right you know ukraine wasn't caused by one thing you know it requires

00:21:48.400 you know putin's brain and lots of other things too um so cnn is running a opinion piece by douglas london

00:21:59.520 who is uh decades uh in foreign uh foreign experience in the cia and he's talking about putin and uh the

00:22:08.880 start of his article is putin the emperor with no clothes now on principle alone i almost didn't read

00:22:15.840 this article because i'm going to add the emperor has no clothes to my empty npc statements uh that's

00:22:25.600 like soylent green hey that's like the matrix it looks like wag the dog is happening and then i'm

00:22:32.880 going to add the emperor has no clothes these are all the things that you say if you don't have anything

00:22:38.480 to add whatsoever there's just nothing to add all right but i'm guessing that uh maybe the editors

00:22:48.560 had something to do with the title because the article itself was pretty good and uh douglas london's

00:22:54.960 take is that putin is not crazy not crazy and that the problem is he's terribly misinformed by his inner

00:23:05.360 circle who don't want to tell him the truth do you buy that do you buy that uh putin is perfectly sane

00:23:16.880 the only problem is all of his information about what's practical to do and what the situation is

00:23:22.320 is skewed by his inner circle because they just will agree with him like sycophants

00:23:27.680 i don't agree with that i don't agree with that i don't believe that putin's sources of information

00:23:37.120 are just as sycophants do you believe that you know i i don't think it's so far out of the

00:23:48.080 scott is a paid corporate shill

00:23:49.920 bill scott says scott is a paid corporate shill

00:23:58.320 have you been paying attention to my career at all have you heard of dilber it's a it's a popular

00:24:04.560 comic it's not really that complementary to management and to corporate interests just saying

00:24:12.240 um anyway um i don't think i buy that putin is only misinformed by his own sycophants

00:24:25.280 he i think it's probably his own opinions that are misinformed meaning that he's got the input he just

00:24:30.480 processes it differently that would be my guess but again we're all guessing nobody knows what putin's

00:24:35.200 really thinking um i watched a little bit of putin's address to russia i think it was yesterday in

00:24:42.800 which he was doing a televised address giving them an update on stuff and if you look at putin's face

00:24:50.560 and his body language he's he's having a tough time now some of it could be just war face you know if

00:24:59.200 if you're the person who's killing thousands of people every day imagine imagine waking up

00:25:05.360 you're putin and you know that today you will kill thousands of people that didn't need to die

00:25:11.040 how does that feel you know i think i could be a war president if if my country had been attacked

00:25:18.640 like i could rationalize sending people to defend the country even if they some of them died

00:25:22.880 but how do you rationalize a war of choice because it was choicey i think he had a choice

00:25:30.800 and he just decides to the thousands of people will die in his own country you know his own citizens

00:25:36.800 he'll send out there to die how do you live with that i don't know um

00:25:44.800 but to me he looked uh like he's not in his best mental state he looks like a person who knows he's losing

00:25:52.880 again we can't we can't read his mind so everybody's just guessing about putin but my take on him this

00:26:00.080 is just you know the totality of my life experience is that he had a face that looks like he knows he's

00:26:07.120 wrong he shouldn't have been there and that he's going to lose that's what his face said to me again

00:26:13.920 just an impression don't put too much in that um joel pollack points out that uh you know there

00:26:24.480 there are calls for the biden administration to get behind the idea that uh that putin's a war criminal

00:26:32.560 um but again so as uh joel says a reporter at the press conference uh correctly pointed out

00:26:40.160 that the biden administration's empty threats to accuse russia of war crimes that they're empty

00:26:45.200 threats when the when the international criminal court does not have jurisdiction over non-member

00:26:50.720 russia and the u.s especially for war crimes committed with non-member ukraine so basically there's no

00:26:58.160 entity that could you know deem him a war criminal and make it stick but i don't think that's the

00:27:04.400 important part i don't think that we're talking about him being a war criminal because it matters

00:27:10.960 if somebody designates him that i think it's just persuasion if you can make everybody talk about

00:27:16.960 whether he is or is not a war criminal or better yet talk about whether some international group will

00:27:23.440 designate him one that's making you think past the sale if what you're talking about is if there's a

00:27:29.520 legal entity to designate him a war criminal you've kind of already uncritically accepted that he's a

00:27:34.880 war criminal and the only question is whether there's an entity to label him

00:27:40.880 it's persuasion it's all persuasion so it's good persuasion if you're if you're on the team that

00:27:48.400 wants putin to look bad it's good persuasion the war criminal thing is really sticky i think it's

00:27:54.480 really sticky all right uh nato said it won't give air cover as you know to ukraine which is

00:28:01.280 essentially telling uh putin he can have ukraine

00:28:06.720 am i right when nato says we definitely won't do air cover as opposed to saying well we're considering

00:28:12.720 it suppose they said we don't say what we're going to do militarily

00:28:17.840 could they have done that could nato have said we don't we don't tell anybody what our military

00:28:24.880 plans are but instead they said nope absolutely we're not going to do any uh air support is that

00:28:32.800 the right thing to do i don't know but to me it sounds like they just told putin he can have ukraine

00:28:40.080 there's nothing to stop him um now a number of people said that uh here here's what the experts

00:28:49.040 say now remember the experts the experts said that putin could take ukraine in 48 hours

00:28:56.640 why do you think that the only reason that uh putin thought he could take ukraine in 48 hours if he did

00:29:03.280 we don't know that but if he did do you think it's because his sycophants would not give him the right

00:29:09.040 information or was it because every single military expert on every side said it would take two days

00:29:18.480 and and and so cnn's running an article that says he's getting into this information or an opinion

00:29:25.120 piece saying he's probably getting his information from just the sycophants and he doesn't know what's

00:29:29.200 going on but suppose he did suppose putin was watching all the western press and he knew exactly

00:29:36.000 what cnn and all the military experts said what would they have been saying they would have agreed

00:29:41.680 with his sycophants if putin had the information outside of his his little unit of agreeers he would

00:29:50.400 have seen the same message that he could take ukraine in two days i'm not wrong about that right so why

00:29:57.600 would we think that his his uh small band of advisors are the problem when they're saying the same

00:30:04.720 thing everybody else was saying presumably again we don't know for sure yeah um

00:30:16.320 people are telling me that this is also what the experts say and confirm this for me confirm that

00:30:21.920 the experts do say this the military experts say that the size of the military that putin seems to be

00:30:29.280 putting into ukraine would be nowhere near nowhere near what it would take to hold the country even if 0.88

00:30:36.320 you if you conquered it to occupy it i completely disagree

00:30:44.160 do you know why because putin can control propaganda completely if you can control propaganda

00:30:51.200 completely you don't need an occupation force you just do it with persuasion now i'm waiting to see

00:30:59.520 the first person to say something that that i'm going to criticize go i say that putin can occupy ukraine

00:31:07.360 successfully with nothing but persuasion because he'll control the information

00:31:13.280 now come on i'm waiting i'm waiting for the criticism i know it's coming come on come on why isn't somebody

00:31:25.680 saying why couldn't he do it in afghanistan or why couldn't the soviet union where's that why are

00:31:32.240 why are you telling me why couldn't they do it in the soviet union and when they were in afghanistan they

00:31:37.360 didn't have the internet and the mujahideen are not on twitter so you can't you can't hold afghanistan 0.74

00:31:45.760 with persuasion because you don't have the communication channel there's no way to hold

00:31:51.440 ukraine there's no way to hold afghanistan with just persuasion you would have to have an occupation 0.93

00:31:56.640 force that was big enough but ukraine do you know what the ukrainian people will hear

00:32:04.160 like within within a week of putin owning all the communications and media in ukraine which seems

00:32:12.160 likely the ukrainian people are going to hear you probably were not aware how many nazis were in

00:32:18.480 your government before we came in here am i right and they'll say it over and over again and they'll show

00:32:25.600 you videos and lots of images and scary things that they saved him from you don't think that half of

00:32:33.200 ukraine which is about all it would take to hold ukraine probably you don't think that half of

00:32:38.080 ukraine could be convinced that maybe the ukraine was on the wrong side yeah that that's very possible

00:32:45.600 practical and doable now remember persuasion doesn't get everybody all the time it's not that kind of a

00:32:53.680 weapon but you can get half the people reliably on any message if the government is behind the messaging

00:33:00.960 you can get half of the people to agree with just about anything and that's probably enough to hold

00:33:05.680 the country or at least reduce the net the reduce the size of an occupation force so here's my uh

00:33:15.520 disagreement with the experts summarized that the size of your occupation force is directly related to

00:33:23.040 the quality of your persuasion if your persuasion is high your occupation force could be small and vice versa

00:33:31.760 they're they're uh what do you call the substitutes they're not perfect substitutes but they're substitutes

00:33:38.000 all right um

00:33:45.040 i just got a weird question by by text and the answer is no

00:34:03.520 no to the question by text all right um you're dismissing the rage of loss of country family

00:34:11.360 and friends yes the ukrainian citizens are not going to be happy with putin and that's going to last

00:34:18.400 but what i'm saying is that there will be enough people who who uh are persuaded to the russian point

00:34:27.520 of view that it reduces the amount of occupation force they need that's all and and if you get the

00:34:35.200 right people in charge of you know the security apparatus then ukraine's own own security apparatus

00:34:41.680 takes care of a lot of the internal conflict

00:34:46.320 is that an official prediction it's an official let me say statement of how the world works so the

00:34:53.520 statement of how the world works is that uh the better the persuasion the smaller the occupation force you

00:34:59.840 need so that that's i guess that's not a prediction that's a statement but i will say it's not a

00:35:07.920 prediction but in my opinion it's possible for putin to hold you ukraine without a gigantic occupation

00:35:15.440 force so that's all i'll say it's possible that doesn't mean you'll do it because the crushing

00:35:21.200 sanctions are pretty crushing so you know there's a lot of variables in play here

00:35:28.880 all right uh why is russia focusing on ukraine's nuclear sites i have a question that i need uh mark

00:35:37.200 schneider or somebody who's smart about nuclear to answer for me i've not seen anybody say the following

00:35:45.440 that russia might be concerned that ukraine would get a hold of a dirty bomb

00:35:51.600 can you make a dirty bomb if you had access to a nuclear power plant and let's say you were all on

00:35:58.800 the same team and you went there and said hey nuclear power plant you're on the side of ukraine 0.97

00:36:05.120 so are we is there any way we can get some of your dirty stuff to make a dirty bomb 0.75

00:36:11.360 somebody says you could do it from spent fuel rods

00:36:18.480 now here's the question why has nobody reported that let's get let's go back to the mike cernovich

00:36:26.080 question which is why does all the reporting coincidentally favor ukraine is that a coincidence

00:36:34.320 now it could be that the only reason that uh ukraine that russia wants to take over the nuclear sites

00:36:43.680 is they want to prevent a false flag

00:36:47.680 what what if russia had heard that ukraine might blow one of its own own nuclear sites

00:36:54.320 which would be the worst case scenario but imagine they would melt down their own site

00:36:58.160 to blame russia and that would basically turn the world against russia until the end of time if a

00:37:05.600 nuclear site goes down in ukraine and russia gets blamed that's a different situation isn't it

00:37:13.840 now would somebody in ukraine do something that evil well i don't know if your whole country is

00:37:19.280 being threatened and you're on a kill list you put me on a kill list let me let me say this clearly 0.88

00:37:24.800 if you put my name on a kill list i might take down a nuclear facility to get myself off it

00:37:34.960 now i'd hope that the people who maybe did this false flag this is all speculative there's no evidence 0.82

00:37:39.840 of any of this but i would hope that anybody who did take down the nuclear site you know got people

00:37:44.640 out of there so so nobody died directly from it but yeah yeah if i were in a government that was on

00:37:51.760 a kill list and i had maybe 48 hours to live and i thought maybe i had to do something drastic

00:37:58.080 i i would consider taking on a nuclear site in my own country because remember the nuclear sites

00:38:04.000 aren't going to help them because the russia is going to turn off the lights until russia has control

00:38:10.240 so they don't need any nuclear sites they're not working but if they could use it to to change the

00:38:16.640 course of the war or get nato involved or something i can imagine i can imagine that russia has some

00:38:23.280 valid reasons for wanting to control those sites that are not um bad now did you see the story that

00:38:31.440 the russians had put explosives around one of the sites so they would blow the nuclear site if

00:38:38.320 i don't know if something went wrong do you believe that story do you believe that the russian army has orders

00:38:44.960 to blow a nuclear site in ukraine under any conditions that sounds like really fake news to me

00:38:53.600 i don't see any argument that the russian army or the russian government or putin could possibly

00:39:02.720 have any benefit from blowing up a nuclear site in ukraine just not possible right

00:39:09.760 so i think that's the fake news story that russia was putting bombs around the nuclear site now again

00:39:18.400 like all of these things if i say something with great confidence those of you who know me well enough

00:39:25.200 you should know if i say something like that and it sounds like confident that a hundred percent of

00:39:31.120 everything you say about this ukrainian situation is iffy can we agree on that i think the only thing we 0.92

00:39:38.640 know is that there's some kind of a war going on after that it's all just it's just bullshit after that

00:39:45.040 so if i look confident just know that that's just a mannerism it's not what's happening in my head about anything

00:39:54.080 all right um now they're saying that zelinski has survived three assassination attempts there are these

00:40:01.360 assassination squads you know they're chechens uh but they they've all been thwarted because the 1.00

00:40:08.320 plucky and highly capable uh ukrainian security uh got tipped off possibly by somebody in russia

00:40:16.640 because even russia doesn't like this they say and so they the death squads were thwarted and eliminated

00:40:24.000 how much of that story do you believe

00:40:25.520 i believe none of it i believe none of it there's probably not a single thing about this story that's

00:40:33.680 true

00:40:36.240 except the general thing that russia might want is zelinski dead

00:40:39.840 um so don't believe any of that even it might be true but i would say the credibility of the source

00:40:46.640 is just zero it's just zero am i right do you all agree with the following statement that it's possibly

00:40:55.120 true possibly true but the source that told you it's true zero critical zero in fact every lie

00:41:03.680 that we've heard it came from this source all right

00:41:09.760 um

00:41:14.320 let's talk about something else so remember i was uh i guess we were all asking the question why isn't

00:41:21.600 ukraine if it still has military assets and some some assets in the sky and drones why are they not

00:41:30.160 wiping out that stalled um russian column that was 40 miles long and they're not going anywhere

00:41:37.760 and i had speculated with my total lack of military um experience that the smartest thing the ukrainians

00:41:45.840 could do is just pick off the supply trucks you know pick off the gas and and food supplies and

00:41:53.840 that's it and just let the convoy be trapped because they can't do anything they're just going to

00:42:00.480 starve to death and uh so we saw a report and again remember a hundred percent of the news and of ukraine

00:42:07.120 is sketchy i'll just tell you what the report is but don't automatically assume that i think it's

00:42:12.880 true i'll just tell you what it is that apparently the you uh the report is that the ukrainians have

00:42:19.760 special forces that have been trained by america the the belief there that their special forces are

00:42:27.840 quite good and that the special forces have been targeting primarily the rear of the column to get

00:42:34.880 this supply trucks and successfully so they're sending out the the best of their special forces and just

00:42:42.320 picking off the supply trucks and they're doing it successfully now that's the report but it's in

00:42:48.480 the context of only propaganda right so we don't really know if that's even happening if if we're

00:42:54.000 being honest we don't know if anything like that's really happening but that's the report now those of

00:43:00.320 you who would like to make fun of my lack of military expertise i would point out that that's what i would

00:43:06.320 have done and i said that publicly before we saw a report that that's what they're actually doing

00:43:11.680 can can you back me on that the i want to make sure that i really did say that in public do you

00:43:17.680 remember hearing it okay so i'm getting some confirmation that people did hear that yeah all

00:43:23.120 right so remember every every time that you're saying but scott the military experts blah blah just

00:43:30.480 remember that i beat the military experts about how effective russia would be in 48 hours i was i

00:43:38.080 was better than the military experts and on the supply truck column my theory of how to address it is

00:43:44.880 exactly what's reported they're doing

00:43:50.000 now i also have uh a i guess a speculation or prediction that the turkish-made drones that are flying

00:43:58.880 over ukraine and attacking russia someday we're going to find out that ukrainians were not piloting

00:44:04.240 those which military expert is telling you that i mean they can't really they can't tell you that

00:44:13.120 but there's no way in hell that we sent a bunch of gazillion dollar uh you know expensive drones over

00:44:21.440 there and we told the ukrainians hey you know take an hour to learn how to use this thing

00:44:26.880 because there's no way the ukrainians had enough trained drone operators there's no way and even

00:44:33.760 if they did wouldn't you want the best drone operators on this job i mean i i think they did they

00:44:40.960 probably just shuffled some paperwork and said all right you were working for nato yesterday but on

00:44:45.920 paper you're working for ukraine now we fire you and then this the guy in the same chair just kept running

00:44:50.880 running running the drones that's what i think i don't i don't think that um the ukraine military

00:44:59.920 built a drone operating center that is successfully operating from ukrainian territory well let me ask it

00:45:07.440 this way do you believe that the drones are being operated from the ground and that the ground source

00:45:16.080 is in you in ukraine today do you believe that do you believe that the ground operation for the drones

00:45:23.200 is in ukraine

00:45:27.600 somebody says yes that would be the worst place to put it you don't think the russians could find that thing

00:45:34.960 i i can't believe that there would still be a central ground operation place for the the drones if russia is

00:45:45.680 in ukraine and has probably some reasonably good intelligence can they can they find where the signal's

00:45:52.880 coming from they can can't they don't you think

00:45:57.680 somebody says no way somebody says no way that they could find where the the source of the signal is

00:46:07.600 is there somebody who's smart enough to know if remember uh elon musk just warned that the starlink

00:46:15.120 terminals could be located by somebody who's you know got the right equipment and that they could be

00:46:20.800 bombed if you can if you can find a starlink terminal now i get that the starlink terminal

00:46:27.280 is not designed to be military grade security i get that but something tells me if a signal is going

00:46:34.080 into space from a place you can't find the source of the signal especially when you've turned off the

00:46:40.480 electricity to pretty much all of ukraine couldn't you just turn off all of the electricity in ukraine

00:46:46.400 and then you'd find basically one signal that's still working and that would be the drone operators

00:46:53.680 because they'd have a you know it's their own source of energy probably

00:46:59.920 somebody says satellites well yeah i mean the satellites are involved but there's still a ground source

00:47:07.840 human who's running it right

00:47:09.440 uh somebody in the comments says i could do it in five minutes with equipment i already own

00:47:18.880 so there's somebody saying they could detect the ground-based operators of the drones with just

00:47:24.880 equipment he owns assuming it's an engineer all right um so there's a thought that the russian influence

00:47:37.840 campaign on the internet has dried up because their source of funding is unavailable because of the

00:47:43.680 sanctions do you believe that do you believe that the russian influence just sort of stopped because

00:47:49.760 their money source for paying the trolls dried up well i saw um senior editor at pc world mark hackman

00:47:58.240 he showed two screenshots of uh showing facebook posts you know the top posts from a week ago

00:48:06.240 and then now and the implication is that a week ago the russian influence campaign was in full swing

00:48:12.720 but now because of the sanctions maybe not and if you look at the uh the list of what the top

00:48:18.960 the top sources were um it changed

00:48:23.360 uh i would say i wouldn't put any real faith in that analysis whatsoever because i i think that

00:48:32.480 what trends changes for lots of reasons so i would i would say low credibility on that but it made me

00:48:40.720 wonder where all of my trolls went because i feel like a week ago i had a whole bunch of uh uh no picture

00:48:49.120 in the profile trolls that were pro-russia ish and i don't see any of them today

00:49:00.080 now it could be the nature of my tweets right so remember i'm this is not a scientific study this is

00:49:06.880 me being biased and trying to recognize a pattern that may not be there today

00:49:10.720 yeah don't you know feed the trolls so is it really russian trolls yes that's a good question

00:49:22.320 but i just know that they seem to have disappeared so here's the question to you if any of you feel

00:49:28.640 that the russian troll bots have been bothering you did they disappear from you somebody says it's the

00:49:34.800 weekend oh yeah maybe maybe maybe they don't work on weekends you know what's funny is that that's

00:49:42.880 actually a pretty good hypothesis but you know it wasn't the weekend that stopped i think it stopped a

00:49:49.440 few days ago maybe it's cia bots i don't know maybe all right uh that

00:49:57.040 is my fascinating uh take um i'll just note that uh are all of you following ian bremer about the ukraine

00:50:08.160 situation uh i'm finding him the best source of you know quick updates on things as well as uh framing it

00:50:16.240 in in productive ways and uh he he's got an article he's uh i think he wrote or referred to uh on g0 i guess

00:50:26.000 he wrote it that uh um he's thinking that the it'll be a pyrrhic victory in other words that

00:50:33.200 putin might succeed in conquering ukraine but it will be the end of russia or the end of putin in

00:50:40.880 terms of their current level of prestige and influence and even economics how many of you would

00:50:47.840 agree with his prediction which is agrees with my prediction at this point as well how many of you

00:50:52.720 agree that uh putin will get control of ukraine but he will be really sorry that he did

00:51:02.160 let me see your yeses and nos it's too early yeah anybody who says too early i automatically agree

00:51:07.680 with that you will get half that's a reasonable yeah he'll get half is a reasonable thing i don't

00:51:14.880 think you'll stop at half but because the other half isn't hard is it the other half is you just

00:51:21.600 surround it you just surround it and take your time don't you um i think he's doing the he's doing

00:51:29.760 the hard half first isn't he even though they're more russian so that makes more sense but it's the

00:51:35.040 harder to conquer part i believe um yeah now i was looking at uh a comment by andres backhouse who's

00:51:47.680 noting that uh both ukraine and russia are aging populations and if you put together two aging

00:51:54.240 populations and uh you know maybe maybe things are not looking good for russia in the long in the long

00:52:00.800 term but i do agree with trump's real estate instinct can we agree on one thing that trump probably

00:52:12.240 understands real estate does everybody agree on that right he understands real estate and his take

00:52:20.960 on ukraine was almost a real estate take wasn't it if you could get ukraine for two dollars worth of

00:52:28.000 sanctions you've got some good real estate it's almost the way it's almost exactly how trump is

00:52:33.360 describing it is good real estate you get good real estate that's worth a lot for a little bit of

00:52:38.480 sanctions now he was wrong about the little bit of sanctions i think the sanctions have a way more bite

00:52:43.680 than initially reported scott's still coping i can't tell if that's a joke

00:52:51.600 elaine morris says scott is still coping i think i'm going to add coping to uh soil and green the matrix

00:53:03.120 the emperor has no clothes uh and you're coping

00:53:08.960 i think that you're coping is probably a sign of cognitive dissonance if you're using that word because

00:53:15.040 if you're trying to explain how somebody else is saying something that doesn't make sense to you

00:53:19.040 if it doesn't make sense to you it could be the problems on your side and one way to know that

00:53:25.200 the problem is probably on your side is if you think the other person is just coping which doesn't really

00:53:30.160 mean anything

00:53:34.880 this is real news and star wars references of course isn't coping a stage yeah sign of grief i suppose

00:53:44.080 um russia paralympic athletes thrown out of competition in china why

00:53:59.360 all right so

00:54:02.240 this ladies and gentlemen

00:54:05.360 was the greatest live stream of all time possibly we'll be able to top it tomorrow but i don't know

00:54:12.720 pretty high bar um let me ask you something in the comments

00:54:19.200 i worry that everybody talking about ukraine is just going to end up saying the same stuff as everybody

00:54:24.160 else am i saying anything different than everybody else is saying this is a real question are you

00:54:30.880 getting any value added out of this at all because i can't tell

00:54:34.880 yeah you know i i think i'm going to get the same pushback pretty soon as i did with covid which is

00:54:45.840 you know the topic you just you can't mind the same topic forever but at the moment

00:54:52.320 is unfortunately interesting unfortunately interesting what's this uh hedging scott is always hedging his

00:55:01.840 predictions he said russia will win and spends the rest of the show praising ukraine military and sanctions

00:55:10.560 really all right is this an npc comment the npcs can only handle the binary

00:55:17.520 something's either a yes or a no as soon as you get past that people can't handle it so here's

00:55:22.480 what i think i'm doing i'm predicting that russia will control ukraine and i'm predicting that the

00:55:28.560 ukrainian military will do will do a surprisingly good job of defending but ultimately will be

00:55:36.480 overwhelmed because putin has the advantage now that as soon as he turns off the media he can do

00:55:42.320 anything he wants there won't be any pictures right as soon as there's no pictures and no reporting on the

00:55:48.000 ground putin can just level everything and he's almost there so there is no inconsistency between saying

00:55:56.400 putin will control the country ukraine and also saying that it's going to be really really hard and

00:56:02.240 might take russia down in the long run those are all consistent it's the same same prediction

00:56:08.800 what about china helping russia china i think is brutally self-interested which will work to our

00:56:16.080 advantage you know we keep saying oh russia is going to be saved by china do you know what is the last

00:56:23.600 thing that putin wants to be saved by china literally the last thing he wants do you know why

00:56:34.080 china doesn't help you for free am i right china is only going to help if it's good for china period 0.53

00:56:42.720 and i think china is going to expect some you know a little something in return so by the time china is

00:56:49.760 directly helping russia which i don't think is going to happen in in the real over direct way

00:56:55.840 by the time they do that china is putting themselves out there pretty far and they don't do that the only

00:57:04.400 way they would put themselves out which is it would be a complete difference in how they've handled

00:57:09.600 their non-involvement up till now not just non-involvement in ukraine but china likes to stay

00:57:15.760 uninvolved in all of this stuff it's like really really central to their their main philosophy is

00:57:20.560 don't get involved in other people's wars pretty good idea so if they did get involved even on the

00:57:29.040 financial part to like save russia i think they would be taking a big favor in return and i don't know what

00:57:36.720 that would be but it's not something putin's one again gonna want to give them so yeah i i don't think

00:57:43.600 that's how they win russia doesn't win by getting controlled by china

00:57:50.640 um

00:57:52.880 i just saw the best comment i've seen so far on locals somebody said they just ate a pound of bacon

00:58:00.160 good for you it was actually the best best comment of the day

00:58:06.160 mass formation and zelensky yes yes the zelensky has hypnotized the western world

00:58:13.840 and uh i have to say that i would like to you know thank some of the independent voices on twitter

00:58:21.040 for literally waking me up on him because i i fell for it pretty hard in the first days

00:58:27.440 i kind of fell for the zelensky you know plucky hero story uh but then as cernovich is doing the best

00:58:37.520 job of you know keeping us sane about that uh he points out that it can't be that all the stories

00:58:43.520 go in one direction you know and it's just obviously propaganda at this point so i see two corrupt uh

00:58:52.320 two corrupt governments fighting each other i'm not entirely i'm not even i don't even care which

00:58:59.520 corrupt government wins frankly i only care about the people is that fair is that a moral and ethical

00:59:08.480 place to be that you have two corrupt governments i don't really care which corrupt government wins

00:59:15.120 but i do care about what happens to the citizens so you know that pushes you in one direction over the other

00:59:26.080 um

00:59:27.760 now let me ask you this if you wanted to design

00:59:30.880 an escape let's say an escape hatch for putin so that he could back down and still save something

00:59:38.080 what would it look like let me suggest a trump-like way to approach this somewhere behind the scenes

00:59:48.080 assuming we can get to putin indirectly i'm sure we can it would be really interesting if the united

00:59:55.040 states was offering a complete amnesty program with catches

01:00:01.520 a complete amnesty program and it would look like this we'll take all of the sanctions off for russia

01:00:11.040 if they turn away from china

01:00:17.920 what just happened when i said that what happened to your brain

01:00:21.760 do you see it now this entire thing could be to put put putin into position to uh to join our side

01:00:34.800 instead of china because that's the big ask because remember china is not sanctioning putin so china

01:00:42.320 loses that leverage they don't have anything to take away they only have only ways to help them which

01:00:47.280 may not even be good for china so if if putin gets to the point of complete desperation which seems

01:00:56.240 likely at this point not guaranteed but it seems likely that putin will reach a point of near

01:01:03.520 desperation what will be his options you know go into exile and never happen um use a nuclear weapon

01:01:12.480 that's not going to help him because there would be a decapitation strike immediately don't you think

01:01:20.080 if uh if putin used a nuclear weapon we would go directly for the decapitation strike probably with

01:01:26.640 nuclear right i mean that's just a given so he can't really use the nuclear thing without dying for

01:01:34.160 sure he can't really go into exile that's not going to happen right so his his options are just going to

01:01:40.880 shrink and shrink he could try to ride it out but then the oligarchs are going to be after him

01:01:45.280 because they're losing all their boats apparently i don't know how many stories have there been so

01:01:50.160 far of oligarchs losing their yachts two or am i hearing the same story twice

01:01:58.720 um i'm seeing so he's saying it's the most bizarre thing i've said in the week now if we push putin to

01:02:05.280 the point where his only choices are to preside over the destruction of russia or to turn from china

01:02:15.120 and be you know more of an ally to the united states which would require a whole host of changes i mean

01:02:21.120 it would be a big realignment but he could do it because as i've told you a million times

01:02:28.560 putin doesn't really have any reason to be our enemy and we don't have a reason to be theirs except

01:02:33.600 we've decided that we are we've sort of just decided we're enemies that's not a reason to be an enemy

01:02:41.200 in in terms of what's good for russia in the long term and the united states in the long term

01:02:46.640 it is to be allies who would disagree with that that because you know china is the the emerging long

01:02:55.440 term threat i guess you could say it that way i say i i think that the arc of history

01:03:02.080 is bending unambiguously toward a russian and american alliance and europe russia europe america will be

01:03:11.600 allied

01:03:14.880 how many of you think that's true i'm seeing mostly yeses which is weird i you know what what are the

01:03:20.560 odds that we would be so

01:03:24.160 so at odds with russia and then i could ask the public here in america

01:03:28.720 america do you think that in the long run we'll be allies with russia and i got nearly i don't know 95

01:03:35.360 or 100 people said yes no not not 100 i'm seeing some no's now

01:03:41.920 i don't know i think it's inevitable i think all of the forces are pushing us in that direction

01:03:48.240 all right um somebody says in the comments we could we should because we're white guys

01:03:53.920 america isn't a bunch of white guys anymore it's 2022 america is finally the melting pot that it was

01:04:04.560 always trying to be but now we're actually a melting pot in terms of numbers i know you don't like the

01:04:10.960 melting pot analogy but i still like it russia is uh definitely not a bunch of white guys somebody says

01:04:25.200 um

01:04:27.840 predict will the ukraine special forces uh succeed in starving the russian column uh starving is uh

01:04:37.680 too big of a word meaning that i don't believe that the russian soldiers will actually die of

01:04:43.120 starvation i do believe that they have made the column at least temporarily useless i think they

01:04:50.800 took them out of the fight so i do think they'll take them out of the fight and continue to take them

01:04:56.160 out of the fight until russia has like total control and you know even over the special forces i guess

01:05:02.400 should we stock up on food who's we in the west i don't think so

01:05:11.520 um

01:05:11.760 oh or besiege yeah

01:05:20.800 all right that is all for now and uh he does whatever a dugan who's that

01:05:26.720 all right stock up on toilet paper i don't think we need to

01:05:36.720 complete nonsense people say all right all right that's all for now i'll talk to you tomorrow youtube

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 05, 2022

Episode 1673 Scott Adams： More Things We Are Learning About The Ukrainian Invasion. Yikes

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