00:01:21.480It's great to have you on the show. Fascinating read, fascinating concepts that you lay out.
00:01:25.900But before we get into that, tell everybody who are you, how are you, where you are, what has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?
00:01:33.440The journey through life, huh? I mean, look at me, or those of those who can't look at me should know that I am not a young man.
00:01:40.120So that that would be a long answer. I was born in Cuba before I was 10.
00:01:45.640I experienced a right wing dictator and a left wing totalitarian dictator.
00:01:53.640So by the time I came to the United States as a kid, I already understood that democracy at its worst was better than the next alternative.
00:02:06.180So I came to the U.S. and I have to say, I know that a lot of ink gets spilled, virtual ink gets spilled about the treatment of immigrants in this country.
00:02:19.380I can't recall a single instance of anything other than being welcomed, being a Cuban, if anything, was an advantage with the girls.
00:04:09.040Things were going haywire in places like Egypt, for example.
00:04:12.980And I know it sounds kind of naive now, but at the time we were asking ourselves, what
00:04:17.800does this have to do, you know, a communications device like the internet with politics?
00:04:23.720I mean, what, you know, today, of course, we know that the two things are intricately
00:04:27.340connected. And of course, the book was an attempt to, you know, my book, which I began to think
00:04:33.840about when I left government, was an attempt to answer that question. What is the connection
00:04:39.420between information structure and political change? And we can get more deeply into that.
00:04:46.480The book was first published as an e-book in 2014. It did okay. Then came 2016 and Brexit
00:04:56.280it happened. And Donald Trump happened. And it did really, really well. And then Stripe Press
00:05:03.620offered to publish a second edition in various formats like Heartbound and Audible.
00:05:11.880And that one came out at the end of 2018. And of course, all the madness. I'm sort of like
00:05:17.680Dr. Doom, you know? Whenever things go terrible, the books start selling like mad. And of course,
00:05:25.140we had January 6th and the election and all that. So it did fairly well after that. So it's an
00:05:30.560attempt to explain the madness, the craziness, the difference between the way things used to be,
00:05:39.020what we used to consider to be normal life, and what today seems to be bombarding us from every
00:05:44.240direction, including the hemorrhage of authority of our institutions that seem to be very feeble
00:05:52.960and very distrusted. And one of the most interesting concepts, when you talk about
00:05:58.500the digital tsunami, you're talking about the fact that there's a huge amount of information
00:06:02.300that is now available to the public that in the past wouldn't have been. And that's combined or
00:06:07.800maybe even caused the fact that you now have a rise of populism, which is in your conception,
00:06:13.680essentially, people wanting revenge or some kind of, they want to punish perhaps the elites that
00:06:21.460they now increasingly distrust. And the elites themselves have no idea what to do. They don't
00:06:27.100have the protection that they used to have when, you know, if you were a member of the elite and
00:06:31.060you were having affairs and whatever, that wouldn't really get into the press most of the time and
00:06:34.680you'd kind of be covered. But now every mistake you make as a member of the elite gets exposed.
00:06:39.740People find out about it. And so you have this crumbling of trust in the elites from people who
00:06:45.080already don't like the elites. And the information flows that we now have are increasingly amplifying
00:06:50.600that so how how is this all impacting our world well i mean basically you have to go back um again
00:07:00.980i i you know reluctantly hark back to the fact that i am not a young man i lived in the 20th
00:07:06.660century a chunk of my life okay a considerable chunk um and it was a different world it was a
00:07:13.540different world it dealt with that scarcity of information that i was talking about that was
00:07:18.240so comfy when I was a global media analyst.
00:07:21.960And all our institutions, including our institutions of politics and democracy, but also media
00:07:27.560and also the entertainment world, also the scientific establishment, the academia, all
00:07:35.940of them basically were resting on the fact that we had no alternative sources of information.
00:07:43.380So they had authority because they did have, each institution had sort of a semi-monopoly on a stream of information.
00:07:51.760So, you know, Walter Cronkite stood and looked us in the eye.
00:07:54.720He was a very imposing man, looked like your rich uncle or something, and deep voice.
00:07:59.780And he would say, that's the way it is for, you know, February 2nd, 2023.
00:08:05.640You didn't think about the fact that he had given you like 23 minutes of two or three visual stories.
00:08:11.780stories. And that supposed was to cover what happened in the world that entire day, right?
00:08:16.120You just thought, well, that's all I got, right? That entire world was swept away by the digital
00:08:23.580tsunami. Now we have massive amounts of alternative information that works both inside and outside
00:08:29.920the institutions. The president, for example, in the olden days relied heavily in CIA, but
00:08:35.440increasingly would say, wait, I'm reading this thing that's contrary to what you say, CIA. So
00:08:41.180So the authority of – the CIA was kind of like the president's newspaper, but like all newspapers, it's kind of losing authority and credibility.
00:08:58.020It's an eruption from the bottom of information that essentially represents a public that is very angry at what it has seen.
00:09:11.020The old 20th century world promised a lot.
00:09:14.840When things were not delivered, it could sort of put a lot of dirt under the carpet.
00:09:20.200But also, you know, it could sacrifice an individual, a Richard Nixon say, but say, you know, the system worked. We saved the system. What is very, very clear is that there's something systemically wrong with these institutions. They are maladapted.
00:09:37.040And the elites, as you say, who are on top of these, who basically manage them, and they're all the institutions that make modern life possible, they are not looking forward.
00:09:52.180That world you described where you could be JFK, and apparently this is a man who had more affairs than a person like me could even conceive of, all right?
00:10:05.420And yet, and I guess everybody knew it on the, in the inside circle of elites, the magic circle, everybody knew this was going on.
00:10:13.940But those of us who were outside that magic circle had no idea because he was protected.
00:10:20.180And that is what our current elite still, well, there's still too many boomers like me, too many people who remember or are nostalgic for the 20th century.
00:12:35.040So that, for example, if I wanted something from Amazon, I just push a button, a key, and it's on my doorstep on the next day.
00:12:46.720But if I deal with my government, it takes months and months to get things done.
00:12:52.040it may sometimes years sometimes never okay depending on which side of the government you're
00:12:56.760dealing with and um and and the attitudes are very different we're used to personalization in in the
00:13:03.480digital world well no the the government treats you and all these institutions academia for example
00:13:10.440treat you as so you come to us and then we condescend to talk to you in our own terms
00:13:15.800And then you will, you know, applaud us because it's what we deserve.
00:13:20.760And I think that method, which is a combination of structural problems within the institutions
00:13:25.660and of rhetorical and also almost moral problems with the elite class that runs the institutions,
00:13:36.560I think it's made for a tremendous coalition between that group and the rest of us,
00:13:43.960many of the rest of us anyway who are fed up they're just not happy with the situation want
00:13:49.000to change want government to look a lot more like amazon i mean amazon is a great big institution
00:13:53.640it's a great big hierarchy it uh but that's not what you that's not what you um encounter you
00:14:01.320encountered service um government gives you service but that's not what you encounter you
00:14:06.220encounter bureaucracy you encounter condescension arrogance so we want one thing to be more like
00:14:11.420the other, I think it's perfectly doable. I don't think the elites want to do it.
00:14:16.680That's a really, really interesting point. And Martin, how long do you think the elites are
00:14:22.300going to be able to hold on to this power for? Because we're seeing in the UK, they're currently
00:14:26.720debating in the House of Lords, the online safety bill about what people should and shouldn't be
00:14:32.520allowed to say online. And to me, this looks like another paragraph, if I'm putting it bluntly.
00:14:38.220So how long do you think they're going to be able to hold on for?
00:14:41.420That's a really good question, and I have no answer. I don't make predictions. You want to be wrong, make a prediction, right? CIA's entire business model was prediction for the president. And as long as tomorrow looks like yesterday, you're good, man. That's most of the time, believe it or not.
00:15:01.080But, of course, what people want to know, including the precedent, is discontinuities, and we can't predict those.
00:15:08.720I've been surprised, I think, because nobody predicted COVID, which was the trigger where the public was so afraid that they actually wanted the elites to be what the elites had been claiming to be from the 20th century on, which is we are the experts.
00:15:21.620We know we have solutions to problems, so there's almost a mathematical mindset to what are very squishy and difficult circumstances, not problems.
00:15:35.240But I think the public wanted desperately for this to be a mathematical problem that could be solved right away by these wise people that were telling us they could do it.
00:15:41.500And I think so then nobody complained too loudly when social media was essentially censored so that non-institutional opinions about COVID were either muted or just blocked out from the information sphere.
00:16:03.080And of course, that took about five seconds before it tipped over into politics.
00:16:07.180And it was more a question of, well, we need to protect our democracy and we need to protect our elections and this Russian hacking.
00:16:14.980And suddenly everything that a certain side, you know, the progressive side found offensive, had become necessary to essentially censor.
00:18:57.940He called that situation much more clearly than they did.
00:19:01.260Today, when you look at the revolt to the public in places like Chile, in places like Spain
00:19:07.340with the indignados, the US with the occupiers, Black Lives Matter, there are no leaders.
00:19:13.020Not only is there no ideology, it's almost anti-ideology.
00:19:16.100There are no programs. There is no coherent set of, and there is no wish to take over power by any of these groups. It is a very, very paradoxical thing. They attack, they loathe the institution, they loathe the elite, they loathe the government.
00:19:35.920And then they say, we hate this thing about you.
00:24:27.880Yeah, just two more things. There is a point at which you have to somehow act, and you have to act on the reality that you understand to be, right? And that's hard under these conditions. That's the dangerous side.
00:24:42.760On the plus side, science tells us that we don't have a firm grasp on truth.
00:24:50.000I mean, the whole idea of science is not that it grants us truth,
00:25:09.760And I can, you know, if you are at the top of the Empire State Building, New York looks like the heavenly city.
00:25:18.480If you're at the bottom of the Empire State Building, you know, and there's a homeless person retching on the sidewalk and traffic and pollution, it looks like hell.
00:25:31.220And I think it's maybe it's good to have our sense, our perspectives questioned by others.
00:25:38.540Yeah, I completely agree with you, Martin.
00:25:41.140To me, and one of the questions I wanted to ask you is that you talked about a lack of
00:25:46.240ideology within these kind of rebel movements, shall we just call them, for the sake of argument.
00:25:52.360But there also seems to be a lack of ideology in our elites as well, doesn't there?
00:25:56.920There doesn't seem to be a consistent way of thinking that they have.
00:26:02.040Yeah, I would say that's true to a certain extent.
00:26:06.160Yes. But certainly in America, the United States, the elites have converted, mass conversion. I mean, I don't think anything has happened since the age of Emperor Constantine, right?
00:26:24.780And I'm talking from like, you know, crusty old corporations like Coca-Cola all the way to the government, to academia, to entertainment, to scientific establishment.
00:26:39.060Everybody has converted to the cult of identity.
00:26:42.220I call it the established church, right?
00:28:10.920And, of course, all the words they put in that stack are the words that convey opinions they don't like.
00:28:16.920Yeah, it's a really, really good point, Martin.
00:28:19.380And we're talking about this kind of post-truth world, but doesn't it mean that in a post-truth world it's impossible to have a cohesive society?
00:28:29.580Because the most important thing is that we all agree that something is true.
00:28:34.020And if we can't do that, then how can we have any type of discussion or debate?
00:28:38.780Well, at some level, that's true. Well, let's not forget that liberal democracy is an amazing invention, right? And what you're describing is the world of a 30 years war, right?
00:28:53.720Where I believe in a certain kind of God, and I believe in a certain kind of Christianity, and a certain kind of life that must follow from that, and because you believe in something very slightly different, the kind of thing that from the perspective of history seems almost insignificant, right?
00:29:13.620But there's a few words difference between what you believe and what I believe.
00:29:16.840We have to now kill each other, all right?
00:29:19.820And liberal democracy, which evolved out of that world as a way to solve that dilemma,
00:29:25.560well, how do we do that, allowed for people who believed in radically different religious,
00:29:31.880cosmic views, sources of meaning, which in the end are the most important things to any
00:29:37.460human being or to any community, to be side by side with very different ones that believe
00:29:43.200and very, you know, if you are an atheist, that's not a minor difference anymore. Or if you're a
00:29:49.540Muslim or a Jew, that's not a minor difference anymore. And yet we all lived peacefully with
00:29:57.160each other, although our beliefs about cosmic truth were so different. Something like that can
00:30:03.500be worked out. You just have to want to work it out. The incentives in the digital world,
00:30:08.860unfortunately so far, have all been towards conflict. Because we do live in the Tower of
00:30:16.440Babel. People who speak with soft voices are just not heard, okay? You need to scream. And if you
00:30:22.460can scream with anger in your voice, you catch a little more attention. And you can scream with
00:30:26.640anger in your voice. And you get somebody on the other side to scream back at you. Now you're
00:30:29.840suddenly a hero, right? And people start to gather behind you and behind the other person.
00:30:33.720And you have a sort of heroic battle of barbarians, you know, like it used to happen in the dark ages.
00:30:41.860That's the incentive so far of the digital world, but it doesn't have to be.
00:31:02.860nothing is determined i am not a determinist i don't believe like like the marxists do that
00:31:07.860there is a fixed um direction of history i don't believe there martin hold on hold on you i think
00:31:14.680would agree with me that human beings first and foremost respond to incentives and if you have an
00:31:19.660incentive structure that incentivizes conflict you will get conflict and if you have an incentive
00:31:24.480structure that doesn't incentivize conflict and incentivizes cooperation for example you will get
00:31:29.960cooperation. So as you say yourself, in this current climate, particularly online, we have
00:31:35.580an incentive structure that incentivizes people to antagonize each other, to see each other as
00:31:41.080enemies, to see each other as almost subhuman. When I observe people's interactions, it feels
00:31:47.860like that. So how do we change that incentive structure? Because at this point, it's not just
00:31:55.000that it's a random accident of of the fact that online seems to have created this facebook twitter
00:32:01.320instagram tick tock they're all invested in this youtube is invested in this it benefits them
00:32:07.400because these are the things that get clicks online so how does this get fixed well i mean
00:32:13.320how how did the 30 years war end right i mean in the end there are many the same um structure can
00:32:22.120be applied differently so that the 30 years war ended with exhaustion all right with exhaustion
00:32:31.560look we're in the early early days of a colossal transformation that uh from the industrial age
00:32:41.080to something that doesn't even have a name yet okay i am not gonna see the end of that
00:32:46.840you guys i'm looking at you you may not see the end of it all right
00:32:50.040right? You're saying we're old, mate. We're not going to make it.
00:32:54.580Well, you can interpret it that way, or you can interpret that this is going to be a long,
00:32:58.880long process, okay? So what is going to be at the end? Okay, when I say it's up to us,
00:33:06.480the chaos is not going to go away. We're not going to go back to, quote, normal. There's
00:33:10.800a tremendous stream of politics in the United States. I don't know if it's like that anywhere
00:33:17.040else I suspect that it is, that wants to get back to normal. This is crazy stuff, you know,
00:33:21.940this idea that men aren't men and women aren't women. God, can we go back to, well, we're never
00:33:26.560going to get back to normal, okay? But we can carry to the end of this process those things
00:33:32.300that are really important to us. For me, it's democracy, for example, okay? So what happened
00:33:37.980in 30 Years' War was exhaustion. All these religions fought themselves to a standstill,
00:33:44.840And suddenly something new came up, the nation state that said, to hell with this, right?
00:33:50.120We are now going to impose a way of being that is less destructive.
00:33:58.760Well, we can't see what's going to be happening in 10, 15, 20 years from now.
00:34:02.840But the same incentive structure that today seems to generate a lot of views may 10, 15 years down the road make people sick because they've been at it for so long.
00:34:14.000and then the incentives will flip all right the incentives will flip it's possible i'm not saying
00:34:20.180it's going to happen i'm not saying it's not going to happen it's up to us no i think you're
00:34:24.480right and action always causes some kind of reaction and people will get fed up with this
00:34:29.260and i already you know one of the conversations we we obviously on this show talked a lot about
00:34:34.100this progressive the excesses of progressive ideology and how it's infected all sorts of
00:34:39.380different industries etc but on the other hand a lot of a lot of people i think in our space are
00:34:43.720starting to think about okay well we've identified what the problem is what's the answer what is a
00:34:49.180positive vision for the future that can people can unite around that actually inspires people
00:34:53.660so i suppose my question for you is if it's up to us what is a responsible person who's watching
00:35:00.260or listening to this what are we to do in our own lives about all of this right okay start with this
00:35:08.420All that anger or all that questioning, let's call it, all that distrust, all that pushiness, let's call it, that you are now aiming at people that you don't even know and at institutions that you have no access to, start by aiming that at yourself.
00:35:29.640All right. And I'm always struck when I look at the Victorians, the English Victorians, okay, that have such a terrible reputation for being smug and being self-righteous, how not like that they were. All right. Go read Gladstone's diary. This man was, you know, one of the great figures in the world.
00:35:53.580one of the great prime ministers of Britain.
00:41:39.080But if Thomas Jefferson, one of my favorite persons in history, woke up, and he's also a Virginian, like I am, and took a look at what was going on with the government today, he would crawl back in his grave and never come out again, okay?
00:41:53.420It's a very different world, a different set of institutional world from the one he expected would be created.
00:43:39.360You'd be surprised at the number of young people that I say that to and they go, huh?
00:43:43.760So 21st century stage is set for something like a Marx Brothers comedy.
00:43:49.700It's kind of slapstick, irreverent, crazy, makes no sense.
00:43:54.260People falling down, people standing up.
00:43:56.620the elites desperately want to play hamlet it's shakespeare it's epic it's important
00:44:06.640but the problem is this you know even if you play hamlet it's going to be groucho marx playing
00:44:12.780hamlet and he's going to do pratfalls all right so it just can't work it just can't work so
00:44:17.720technology is going to play a fundamental part in this it's already played a fundamental part
00:44:22.600Now comes the human aspect. Now comes the human moment where we take the technology and make it our own in a way, hopefully, if things go right, in a way that sustains democracy and sustains our prosperity and maybe tones down the incentive for conflict.
00:44:44.240and what gives you reason to hope because a lot of the times when we talk about this when we talk
00:44:52.520about these issues people say you know they point out the things that we should worry about and of
00:44:59.060course that's a valid argument but we don't also talk about the positives as well yeah okay let's
00:48:03.120And the curious thing for me speaking of killing each other is what do you think the impact is of this on the West versus its adversaries, let's put it gently?
00:48:14.940Because we spend a lot of time in the West, you know, doing this division and argument and conflict thing in a way that other cultures are not.
00:48:24.060Are we making ourselves more vulnerable or will the West prevail in this situation?
00:48:30.480Yeah, what is the West? I mean, that is such an old-fashioned category, right, that you will probably get banned on Twitter, you know, before Musk by even using that term.
00:48:41.300I, look, I intuitively would agree with you, except I'm looking at the world.
00:48:54.900I'm looking at the world, and let's talk about the West.
00:48:58.780Let's talk about liberal democracy, okay?
00:49:02.660And, okay, what are the rivals of liberal democracy?
00:49:07.800Well, again, back in the 20th century, there was a severe, there were several, there were several major rivals. Liberal democracy at a certain point, that was before my time, was considered to be old fashioned and useless, right? And the fascists and the Nazis and the Bolsheviks all had better ways.