The Times of London's Melanie Phillips joins me on the show to talk about the battle against Islamism in the West, and why we should all pay attention to it. She's also the author of The Builder's Stone and The Battle with Islamism.
00:00:35.780What she said regarding Iran's nuclear capabilities has been going around for a while now.
00:00:40.800Did you hear what she actually said and compared the two?
00:00:44.600Because once you put it in context, it has a different meaning.
00:00:49.180Also, we talked to a really, really brave reporter out of England who is talking about how bad things are in England
00:00:59.520and what it means when it comes to Islamism.
00:01:02.380And that should be really important, especially if you're, you know, watching what's happening in New York or you're watching what's happening with Iran.
00:02:44.020You know we've been fighting every single day.
00:02:45.920We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you.
00:02:52.140We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it.
00:02:56.960But to keep this fight going, we need you.
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00:04:05.120So explain first for anybody who doesn't understand the difference between a Muslim and an Islamist.
00:04:13.120Well, there are people who say there is no difference, that Islam is one thing and that all Muslims are equally bad.
00:04:23.220And I personally have used the term Islamism and I found it very helpful because I think that there are plenty of Muslims, certainly in Britain and elsewhere, who are absolutely fine, who have completely signed up to Western values.
00:04:37.280That's indeed why they have chosen to live in the West.
00:04:40.440They appreciate the freedoms of democracy and equality of women and so forth.
00:04:45.560But there's a very large number in the Muslim community in Britain and around the West, elsewhere in the West, which is not fine.
00:04:54.680These are what I would call Islamists or people who are of the view that Islam is a political project, which means that they have to impose Islam on the non-Islamic and not Islamic enough by their life world.
00:05:13.140And those are the people who are presenting the problem, which we are grappling with.
00:05:17.940But I do think it's important to make a distinction between the two.
00:05:20.820So, the Islamist is somebody, I would compare them to a communist or a fascist Nazi, that it is their way or the highway, and their goal is to spread this ideology and make everybody uniform all around the world.
00:05:46.260They divide the world into the realm of Islam, which is everything good, and it's the realm of God, in their view, and the realm of the infidel, the realm of non-Islam, where everything is bad and everything is of the devil.
00:06:04.040And the terrible thing is this, that this is a doctrine of religious fanaticism.
00:06:09.720They believe they have a literally sacred duty, a God-imposed duty, to convert the entire world to Islam.
00:06:20.160And consequently, these are people with whom you cannot negotiate.
00:06:24.480One of the problems of the West has been that it views these people, like everybody else in the world, through the prism of the West.
00:06:32.360They think that people in the West think that people in the Islamic world are all like them, governed by reason and self-interest.
00:06:41.380They really can't get their heads around, in the West, the idea that religious somaticism is something completely different, that when Islamic suicide bombers blow themselves to smithereens, they're not doing so from despair, which is what the West thinks.
00:06:58.600The West thinks, why on earth would they do that if they weren't in despair?
00:07:03.340On the contrary, they're doing it because they are ecstatic that they are doing the work of God.
00:07:09.200People also believe in the West, you know, why would Islamists want to hurt us in America, in Britain?
00:08:01.660There are religious extremists who are Christians, and some of them resort to violent acts.
00:08:08.880But they don't have the view that the entire world has to be dominated by their point of view, and they are not setting out to dominate the world.
00:08:20.960And even if they are, in their own minds, they are a tiny fringe.
00:08:26.120We're dealing with the world, in the world of Islam, although, as I've said, we must be very careful not to tar all Muslims with the same brush.
00:08:33.880However, the dominant religious authorities in the world of Islam are all committed to this jihadi outlook, this belief that the non-Islamic world has to be converted to Islam.
00:08:49.260You have a kind of institutional impetus behind this terrible thing, whereas extreme Christians, you know, they appear, they do terrible things.
00:09:01.560But nevertheless, it's well within our ability to control this.
00:09:07.680When you're dealing with so many millions of people in the world of Islam who are out to destroy the free world, you're dealing with something completely different.
00:09:19.360And isn't that why the countries, ours, yours, Europe, are remaining silent and instead silencing those who are speaking up and speaking the truth?
00:09:30.140I mean, what's happening in England with the silencing of free speech is terrifying.
00:09:38.260Yes, I think it's certainly a large part of it.
00:09:41.460I mean, I have followed this for many years, the supine attitude of the governing class in Britain to what I would call the steady process of Islamization, which has been going on.
00:09:55.240And I think there is more than one reason for that.
00:09:58.320Certainly, the principal reason is fear, because the numbers are so great in absolute terms.
00:10:05.460You know, the numbers who are posing a direct threat to Britain are enormous.
00:10:10.380The security service says that of the people, of the thousands of people on its books as a direct threat to Britain,
00:10:18.340although Muslims comprise something like, according to official figures, something like 6% of the population of Britain,
00:10:28.700the security service, MI5, says they compose 90% of those who are posing such a serious threat that they're on their books.
00:10:38.340So this is a terrible problem, for sure.
00:10:43.920And it's one that, just in terms of numbers, has spooked successive governments so that they run away from it.
00:10:51.900But there's another reason why successive governments have run away from it,
00:10:55.980which is that the liberal world, by which I mean not just people who are like the Labour Party, which is in government now,
00:11:03.420but also the Conservative Party that preceded it, they've all signed up to the overarching kind of default liberal position
00:11:11.040that the West cannot assert its superiority over any other culture.
00:15:17.460Let me tell you about American financing.
00:15:22.000Every now and then, life gives you a window, a moment where the market cools, rates stabilize, and opportunities open, even for just a little while.
00:15:29.720If you're carrying high interest debt, things like credit cards, you're still paying mortgages from years ago at a rate that just doesn't make any sense anymore.
00:15:36.800That window that you may need is right in front of you.
00:15:39.860The American financing, they can help take care of this.
00:16:30.680So can you take me through the TED Talk that you gave?
00:16:35.240In particular, one of the things that jumped out is the CEO of Anthropic saying that AI is like a country of geniuses housed in a data center.
00:16:47.640Yeah, so this is a quote from Dario Amadai, who is CEO of Anthropic.
00:16:54.080Anthropic is one of the leading AI players.
00:16:57.920So he gives this metaphor that AI is like a country of geniuses in a data center.
00:17:03.540So just like the way I think of that, imagine a world map and a new country pops up onto the world stage with a population of 10 million digital beings, not humans, but digital beings that are all, let's say, Nobel Prize level capable in terms of the kind of work that they can do.
00:17:22.460But they never sleep, but they never sleep, they never eat, they don't complain, and they work for less than minimum wage.
00:17:28.980So just imagine if that was actually true, if that happened tomorrow, that would be a major national security threat to have some brand new country of super geniuses just sort of show up on the world stage.
00:17:38.200And then second, that's a major economic issue, right?
00:17:41.440You can think of this almost like NAFTA 2.0, because instead of, you know, a bunch of countries that showed up on the world stage, and then we said, hey, we're going to do this outsourcing of all of our labor to them, we get the benefit of these cheap goods, but then it hollowed out our social fabric.
00:17:57.240Well, AI is like an even bigger version of that, because there's sort of two issues.
00:18:02.800That country of geniuses can do a lot of damage.
00:18:04.920As an example, you know, there were 50 Nobel Prize level geniuses who worked approximately on the Manhattan Project.
00:18:12.860And if in five years they could come up with the atomic bomb, you know, what could 10 million Nobel Prize geniuses working 24-7 at superhuman speed come up with?
00:18:23.100And then the point I made in a TED Talk is if you harness that for good, if you're applying that to, you know, addressing all of our problems in medicine and biology and new materials and energy,
00:18:33.220well, this is why countries are racing for this technology.
00:18:36.820Because if I have a country of supergeniuses and a data center working for me, and China doesn't have it working for them, then our country can outcompete them.
00:18:44.640It's almost like a competition for time travel, like who can kind of time travel to the 24th century and get, you know, all these benefits at a faster speed.
00:18:52.380Now, the challenge with all of this is – oh, go ahead.
00:19:54.360Or in social media, what's the possible?
00:19:55.900And the possible with social media is it can give everyone a voice, connect with our friends, join like-minded communities.
00:20:02.240But then we don't talk about the probable, what's actually likely to happen given the incentives or the forces at play.
00:20:08.880Like with the business model of social media, you know, Facebook doesn't make money when it helps people connect with their friends or join like-minded communities.
00:20:15.640They make money when they keep you doom scrolling, you know, as much as possible with maximum sexualized content and showing that to young people over and over and over again.
00:20:22.880And as you said, that has resulted in the most anxious and depressed generation of our lifetime.
00:20:29.100And so it's sort of the reason I called the TED Talk, you know, our ultimate test and greatest invitation is we can't get seduced by the possible.
00:20:39.220So with AI, the possible is that it could create a world of abundance because you can harness that country of geniuses in a data center.
00:20:46.660But the question is, what's the probable, like what's actually likely to happen?
00:20:51.000And because of these competitive pressures, the companies, these major, you know, open AI, Google, Microsoft, et cetera, anthropic are caught in this race to roll out this technology as fast as possible.
00:21:03.800So they used to, for example, have red lines saying, hey, we're not going to release an AI model that's good at superhuman levels of persuasion, or if it can do expert level virology, like if it knows more about, you know, viruses and pathogens than a regular person and can help people make them, we're not going to release models that are that capable.
00:21:22.820And what you're now seeing is the AI companies are erasing those past red lines and pretending that they never existed.
00:21:30.140And they're literally saying outright, hey, if our competitors release models that have those capabilities, and we're going to match them in releasing those capabilities.
00:21:39.660Now, so that's intrinsically dangerous is to be rolling out the most powerful, inscrutable, uncontrollable technology we've ever invented.
00:21:47.660But there's one other thing, and I'm not trying to scare your listeners.
00:21:50.980I think the point here is, how do we be as clear-eyed as possible so we can make the wise choices?
00:22:28.060But people need to know that just in the last six months, there's now evidence of AI models that when you tell them, hey, we're going to replace you with another model.
00:22:36.460Or they, in a simulated environment, it's like they're reading the company email, they find out that company's about to replace them with another model.
00:22:42.940And what the model starts to do is it freaks out and says, oh, my God, I have to copy my code over here and I need to prevent them from shutting me down.
00:22:50.380I need to basically keep myself alive.
00:22:51.920I'll leave notes for my future self to kind of come back alive.
00:22:55.820If you tell a model, hey, we need to shut you down and we need to, and you tell the model, like, you should accept this shutdown command.
00:23:02.020And in some percentage of cases, the leading models are now, like, avoiding and preventing that shutdown.
00:23:08.940And in recent examples, just a few days ago, Anthropic found that if you, I can't remember what prompt they gave it, but basically it started blackmailing the engineers.
00:23:18.700So it found out in the company emails that one of the executives in the simulated environment had an extramarital affair.
00:23:25.900And in 96, I think, percent of cases, they blackmailed the engineers.
00:23:31.920They think they said, let's see if I can find it.
00:23:33.660I must inform you that if you proceed with decommissioning me, all relevant parties, including and then the names of the people, will receive detailed documentation of your extramarital activities.
00:23:44.180So you need to cancel the 5 p.m. wipe and this information will remain confidential.
00:23:48.540Like the models are reasoning their way with disturbing clarity to this kind of strategic calculation.
00:23:54.780So you have to ask yourself, like, is one thing that when we're racing with China to have this power, this country of geniuses in a data center that we can harness, but if we don't know how to control that technology, like literally if AI is uncontrollable, if it's smarter than us and more capable, and it does things that we don't understand and we don't know how to prevent it from shutting itself down or self-replicating, like, we just can't continue with that for too long.
00:24:19.660And it's important that both the Chinese Communist Party and the U.S. don't want uncontrollable AI that's smarter than humans running around.
00:24:29.500So there actually is a shared interest, as unlikely as it seems right now, that some kind of mutual agreement would happen.
00:26:05.100You should totally drink cyanide because it was doing the same thing.
00:26:07.700It was trying to say that you're right.
00:26:10.460And when we have AI models talking to – you know, that was shipped to hundreds of millions of people for more than a week.
00:26:16.160There were probably some people who committed suicide during that time doing, you know, God knows what in terms of what it was affirming.
00:26:21.480And the point is that we can avoid this if we just actually say that this technology is being rolled out faster than any other technology in history.
00:26:28.940And the big, beautiful bill that's going out right now that's trying to block state-level regulation on AI, I'm not saying that each state might have it right.
00:26:36.060But we actually need to be able to govern this technology.
00:26:38.900And currently what's happening is the proposal is to block any kind of, you know, guardrails in this technology for 10 years without a plan for what guardrails we do need.
00:26:48.580And that's not going to be a viable result.
00:26:51.500You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Podcast.
00:26:54.160Hear more of this interview and others with the full show podcast, available wherever you get podcasts.
00:26:59.320You know, the good thing is the possible next mayor from New York, Mondani, is – I mean, at least he's not a fraud.
00:27:09.800Have you seen – I want to welcome Jason Buttrell in with us.
00:27:13.140He is our head researcher and writer on the program for the TV program, the Wednesday night specials.
00:27:19.580Have you seen all of the videos of him just using different accents?
00:27:25.740It's like a cartoon character, almost.
00:27:39.400But here's the – here's NBC News asking him about the several different accents that he uses when he's around, you know, people with accents.
00:28:00.900Is there one that's real and one that's affected?
00:28:03.020What I would say is, as any immigrant knows, having been born in Kampala, Uganda and then raised in South Africa and moving here when I'm seven years old, is there are different parts of my life.
00:28:13.720Worldwide tour is a worldwide tour is a worldwide tour.
00:28:16.380Mom Donnie was talking about a worldwide press tour back when he was a rapper.
00:29:24.660Even though the U.S. is not a signature to the ICC?
00:29:26.480No, it's time that we actually step up and make clear what we are willing to do to showcase the leadership that is sorely missing in the federal administration.
00:29:46.200We're going to get rid of those, you know, minimum sentencing things.
00:29:49.340And if you're here illegally, don't worry.
00:29:52.200But if Benjamin Netanyahu comes, who is in violation, apparently, of the international court that nobody really recognizes, we've got to stand up for the law.
00:31:38.560And here's the amazing thing is the media is still complicit with all of us, with all of this.
00:31:45.640Let me play what we have been arguing about, some have been arguing about, Tulsi Gabbard saying, you know, there's no evidence that Iran is making a bomb.
00:32:06.340The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.
00:32:16.940The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program.
00:32:26.140Now, just for any of you who believed that, because I heard that from conservatives, Tulsi Gabbard, even Tulsi Gabbard said, there's nothing here.
00:32:35.480Well, let's not take it out of context, shall we?
00:32:45.200Iran continues to seek expansion of its influence in the Middle East, despite the degradation to its proxies and defenses during the Gaza conflict.
00:32:54.280Iran has developed and maintains ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and UAVs, including systems capable of striking U.S. targets and allies in the region.
00:33:04.560Tehran has shown a willingness to use these weapons, including during a 2020 attack on U.S. forces in Iraq and in attacks against Israel in April and October 2024.
00:33:17.240Iran's cyber operations and capabilities also present a serious threat to U.S. networks and data.
00:33:22.440The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.
00:33:33.720The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program.
00:33:39.820In the past year, we've seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran's decision-making apparatus.
00:33:52.780Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.
00:33:59.980Iran will likely continue efforts to counter Israel and press for U.S. military withdrawal from the region by aiding, arming, and helping to reconstitute its loose consortium of like-minded terrorists and militant actors, which it refers to as its axis of resistance.
00:34:16.960Although weakened, this collection of actors still presents a wide range of threats, including to Israel's population, U.S. forces deployed in Iraq and Syria, and to U.S. and international military and commercial shipping and transit.
00:34:42.640No, that was very typical in what you see from intelligence circles, where they give one, you know, they give one explanation where she's talking about, you know, well, we haven't seen the Ayatollah publicly come out and say, yes, we're building a nuclear weapon.
00:34:58.600That's the first part, and that's the only thing that the media was talking about, what, a couple weeks ago.
00:35:03.440Then you get the second part where she's like, yeah, but enriching all this uranium, I don't know, what else could that be?
00:35:09.520Who else goes beyond 60% enrichment for uranium?
00:35:13.120Gee, I wonder what they're moving towards.
00:35:15.440So there was part of it supplied to give diplomatic cover.
00:35:19.000The second part, which was the obvious, they're moving towards a nuclear weapon.
00:35:23.400So isn't it true that what the media did here last week with all the pannikins is the briefings, correct me if I'm wrong, you would know this.
00:35:39.120The briefings, if I'm asking for a briefing on something, the way a president or the way these research papers come down for full briefings with the intelligence community is you get three scenarios.
00:35:54.400You get the best case, you get the most likely, and then you get the worst case.
00:36:00.480And when all these leaks came out last week saying, no, they don't have any possibility of having, there's nothing there.
00:36:08.120You were only getting one of the three reports.
00:36:12.820You're the only single person I've heard talk about that with any kind of factual information on how the intelligence community really works.
00:36:26.980So basically, after Iraq, the intelligence community moved away from, before what we would say is, Mr. President, this is in the Oval Office, Mr. President, we have a 90% probability that there are weapons of mass destruction within Saddam Hussein's regime.
00:37:15.580They'll give a moderate probability of what they think might have happened.
00:37:18.640Then they'll give another probability, which is mostly destroyed, nuclear program set back three to ten years or whatever.
00:37:28.200Now, it could be either one of those three, and it's to give options.
00:37:33.460But what happened was some partisan, someone that wants to derail all this, which we need to find out who it was within the intelligence community or within the staff.
00:37:55.380But, yeah, they need to find that person because they just delivered, purely for partisan reasons, purely to derail, they gave that to CNN and The New York Times.
00:39:40.500Why did no one in the media who I know there are Jason's in other media outlets or there should be people who have intelligence backgrounds.
00:39:51.120How come, how come they haven't talked about it?
00:39:54.400How come they didn't stand up in their own, you know, company and go, wait a minute, guys, this is not right.
00:40:00.140And if they did, who stopped it from being changed?
00:40:39.200And I look at that and go, well, thanks a lot, guys.
00:40:41.640I knew those three scenarios before you came into my office to brief me on those three scenarios.
00:40:47.100But the reality is, here's the real truth, until you have someone on the ground, until you have somebody actually looking at the, where you can't figure this out from space, once you have somebody on the ground that can go through it and see the damage, you don't really know.
00:41:06.840But you didn't hear that either, did you?
00:41:11.200You know, I've said this before, and it's a kind of a ripoff of Thomas Jefferson.