TRIGGERnometry - The Midterm Win Could Make the Democrats Worse - Sam Harris

00:00:01.000 This was always the war we should have waged,

00:00:04.000 but we have complete incompetence in charge.

00:00:08.000 At a certain point, you have to recognize

00:00:10.000 that there's evil in the world.

00:00:11.000 Last I looked, there are people in the MAGA cult

00:00:13.000 who understand that.

00:00:14.000 I don't want to make this around war argument episode,

00:00:16.000 but you're not representing my point correctly.

00:00:20.000 The path to fascism in America

00:00:23.000 is for the left to get sufficiently crazy.

00:00:26.000 I fear that the ideologues on the left

00:00:29.540 could capture more of the conversation.

00:00:31.680 There's a very real possibility now

00:00:33.680 that you're gonna get a wokeness

00:00:35.340 like you haven't seen before, don't you think?

00:00:38.180 I'm worried about that.

00:00:39.340 If it's a forced choice between El Sayed and Nick Fuentes,

00:00:43.680 I think we go right in this country.

00:00:46.180 Between fascism and communism,

00:00:48.180 America picks fascism 100 times out of 100.

00:00:51.400 of 100. Before we start, a very quick movie recommendation. We know our audience and every

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00:01:03.280 by Ben Shapiro and stars Rob Lowe, James Franco, and Nick Nolte. Set in Moscow in 1938, a former

00:01:10.220 literature professor is arrested and brought to the infamous Lubyanka prison, charged with

00:01:15.160 conspiring with his dissident priest. There, he faces interrogation by his brilliant but brutal

00:01:20.700 former student. If you care about the things we talk about on this show, like freedom of

00:01:25.540 conscience, this one will resonate with you. Confession is now streaming only on The Daily

00:01:30.200 Wire. Join to watch at dw.com slash confession. Thanks to The Daily Wire for sponsoring this

00:01:36.580 episode. Sam Harris, welcome back to Trigonometry. Good to see you both. It's great to see you.

00:01:43.020 It's good to see you. It's a very interesting moment in America. You know, the midterms

00:01:49.540 happened last week uh huge change i i thought for me personally having known you for a while and us

00:01:56.400 having had a number of conversations having had you explain your position to trump in detail

00:02:01.660 to me the part of the irony is it seems that he's been undone by prosecuting something on which you

00:02:07.660 actually probably agree with him which is dealing with the threat of islamist radical yeah this is a

00:02:12.700 painful irony i can't drink in the uh what's it being called now trump and freud as fully as

00:02:19.460 i might because the thing that people are most disillusioned by his former fans are most

00:02:25.100 disillusioned by is one of the maybe two things he's done that that i think i can defend so

00:02:31.640 the other one being closing the border right um so yeah i mean there's an irony there and the thing

00:02:38.800 that to make that less obscure that the thing that people seem to most hate him for is the war

00:02:44.460 the war of choice in iran and i think that's a war of choice that we could have uh defensively

00:02:50.220 waged more or less at any point in the last 47 years right and so i mean he's he's done it badly

00:02:57.180 he's communicated about it abysmally he's um i mean he's shown some spine and then shown

00:03:04.540 perfect spinelessness he's lied and i mean he's his his messaging has been it's just been deranged

00:03:11.580 as i would have expected but the truth is even now i still hold out some hope that if he just

00:03:17.980 you know doesn't declare defeat uh unequivocally the regime may yet fall right i mean the the

00:03:27.180 economic pressure may be further military i don't know what's gonna we don't know what's gonna

00:03:30.780 happen next week but there's rumors of you know further military pressure coming it's possible

00:03:37.900 that there's a there's a good and defensible outcome even now but you know critics of this war

00:03:44.220 can certainly um be understood to to in their in their perception of this being a disaster in the

00:03:53.100 making because it it it has been disastrous i mean just take one piece trump told the people

00:03:59.420 of iran to rise up and reclaim their country that help was on the way and then stood by as tens of

00:04:05.660 thousands of people were massacred right so it's just i mean that is that were the only error

00:04:10.700 that's hard to hard to recover from um but you know he's compounded that with just one humiliation

00:04:18.620 of our country after the next um but still it's you know this is an evil regime that has been

00:04:28.780 needlessly immiserated in its own people uh we should you know the women of iran are absolute

00:04:34.620 heroes um and i would actually was just with um i just saw masi alinejad you know that the

00:04:43.020 the uh has she been on your podcast no um she's fantastic uh you know the iranian regime i think

00:04:49.100 has tried to kill her three times in the u.s this was always the war we should have waged but we

00:04:55.260 should we have complete incompetence in charge who in the case of trump really don't have principles

00:05:03.500 I mean, he's just, you know, I think he thought this was, there was going to be an easy decapitation strike.

00:05:10.480 And, you know, it's understandable that he did think that.

00:05:13.240 I mean, when you can drop a bomb and, you know, take out several tiers in the org chart of the Iranian regime,

00:05:20.960 it's easy to hope that that would have been enough to take out the regime.

00:05:25.980 But it clearly wasn't.

00:05:27.380 I mean, it's just fanatics all the way down.

00:05:30.320 So anyway, so that's just to say that my gloating about the unraveling of Trumpistan is tempered by my sense that many of the people who are disillusioned are disillusioned primarily for the wrong reasons.

00:05:52.740 Well, we'll maybe come back to that.

00:05:53.980 But one of the other things that I thought is interesting is

00:05:56.600 corruption is a big part of the conversation

00:06:00.580 that has caused people to become alienated from the MAGA movement.

00:06:05.060 And that's something you raised with us in the past.

00:06:06.900 Oh, yeah.

00:06:08.160 Do you want to talk us through a little bit of what people mean

00:06:10.960 when they talk about corruption, some of the cases and details?

00:06:16.200 Well, I think, you know, I was on, I think, exactly a year ago,

00:06:20.520 last time. And I think we spoke about that a lot. But I mean, he's he even then I mean,

00:06:25.280 since then, he's he's earned, I think, more billions. But I mean, the level of self-dealing

00:06:32.580 is just astounding. I mean, the crucial thing to recognize is that Trump, unlike any other

00:06:39.280 president we've ever had, views the. The the levers of American power as his personal

00:06:50.280 property to be worked or even, you know, nullified, you know, traded away for just personal advantage

00:06:59.480 or the advantage of his friends and family. So he's used tariff policy. He's used foreign policy

00:07:05.080 to just create a cash register for himself and his friends. And as recently as, I don't know,

00:07:15.640 what was this, a month ago, announced that, I mean, he no sooner put sanctions on any country

00:07:21.860 that would deal with Russian oil than he broke those sanctions himself by announcing a diesel

00:07:28.120 deal, which was obviously going to advantage friends and family in his particulars. And so

00:07:35.440 it's, again, I'm very happy that Republicans or, you know, former Trump fans are starting to react

00:07:43.960 to this but you know it's again it's a mixed feeling because i think what took them so long

00:07:50.120 when this so this was it's been obvious for a decade who this guy was i mean the level of

00:07:55.000 of um avarice and i mean again it's all about him and his advantage i mean all he wants is

00:08:02.920 money and fame and i mean that's clearly it's been true for as for as long as we've known him

00:08:08.360 and that's and we've known him for decades long before even uh uh his his political aspirations

00:08:17.240 were articulated and he was just this this grifting self-promoting lunatic and he didn't

00:08:24.040 change as a person by kind of lucking into power and what happened i can to remind your your

00:08:31.160 listeners of um my view of this i mean he is he is a game show host who was successfully marketed

00:08:38.280 as a business genius to tens of millions of credulous americans who watched 14 seasons of

00:08:44.600 the apprentice and that worked we have a country that bought that lie i mean he was not a business

00:08:50.040 genius uh he's nothing like even a a brilliant real estate developer he was not even among the

00:08:57.080 most prominent real estate developers in new york he was a he was just this branding guy who

00:09:03.080 again became a game show host and and he's he's in his defense he's funny and he's entertaining

00:09:09.720 he's not boring right so like boredom is is you know the original sin i guess uh to be avoided at

00:09:15.820 all costs so it's um he succeeds there where many politicians clearly don't right it's the fact that

00:09:22.900 he could just cut through the republican party in in 2016 with a scythe um that was due to the fact

00:09:31.020 that all these guys were stiffs and he wasn't and um he could see so and i mean perversely his

00:09:38.660 his crassness his his total lack of moral center his his obliviousness to facts or even logic

00:09:46.880 his shamelessness at at even contradicting that the sentence he spoke you know moments ago um

00:09:57.020 i mean his total you know this supernatural incapacity to be embarrassed for himself

00:10:01.820 right um that is a kind of superpower because it reads to many many millions of americans

00:10:10.620 apparently again i'm still astonished that we're even here to talking about this man

00:10:16.140 um as authenticity i mean he's authentically an awful person and that's better than being

00:10:23.260 a hypocrite right they think most people in power are hypocrites they're really awful but they're

00:10:28.180 pretending to be good they're sanctimonious assholes and they're and they're you know

00:10:32.220 they're judging you from their elitist you know perch in their institutions um and that is the

00:10:38.060 thing to which most americans are you know 51 of americans at the time were fatally allergic so

00:10:44.800 trump is better than all of that because at least he's authentically uh a cheeseburger eating

00:10:51.680 fake. I mean, he's authentically a fake. I mean, this is a weird kind of postmodern

00:10:58.100 structure. I mean, people have compared this to, you know, professional wrestling with kayfabe,

00:11:05.020 you know, like what's fake and what's real. Well, it's a real, it's kind of the fakery is part,

00:11:09.340 the imposter is part of the entertainment, right? The spectacle is, has priced in the fact that

00:11:17.300 this is not real violence it's not real wrestling but um and to some in some sense that that con i

00:11:24.980 mean his fans always flattered themselves that they were sort of in on the con right they were

00:11:30.500 kind of willingly being conned by this con man and it was fun and funny and they're owning the libs

00:11:37.860 all the while i look like they did they didn't bother them because because it really bothered

00:11:42.580 the libtards right so we were just we're just now just getting drunk on liberal tears um but

00:11:52.740 i mean you don't you don't think the character of the president

00:11:56.100 matters right he's the most powerful man in the world well let this is i'm glad you brought that

00:12:00.980 up because i was gonna say if perhaps we steal man not look the the the people who voted and

00:12:07.060 supported trump will will be in many different camps all the way from you know he's the greatest

00:12:12.500 thing ever to i'm a republican i have to vote for our nominee to i'm a swing voter and this is where

00:12:20.660 for me it's interesting and you you make the point this you know the personality of the person who's

00:12:25.300 the most powerful man in the world is really important a lot of people i think made the

00:12:29.700 calculation that bad personality is not as bad as bad policy and i remember having a conversation

00:12:36.100 with you i think on tom billy's podcast we were both guests at the time where we kind of agreed

00:12:40.420 i think we're not kind of agreed but i think i remember you saying the phrase if liberals don't

00:12:46.180 police the border fascists will yeah and i think that was the the choice at the time it was a

00:12:52.580 binary choice and to many people not a particularly welcome one but if you have a country where you

00:12:59.220 have literally 10 million people coming in illegal over the previous presidency what are people

00:13:06.020 supposed to do i think that's where a lot of people were no i think that's a fair it is fair it's

00:13:11.780 defensible i mean it was not quite defensible at the moment uh you had to pull the lever to vote in

00:13:19.300 in 2024 uh because by that point it was clear the democrats had gotten the message that okay we have

00:13:28.180 to we have to end this zombie movie at the border right this is this is untenable biden was trying

00:13:33.780 that bill was getting blocked by republicans who cynically wanted to maintain this issue

00:13:38.260 into the election um so it was i don't i don't think kamala harris was going to let the border

00:13:43.940 unravel in the same way um but oh yeah i mean you know biden's first day in office

00:13:50.900 his is his first act as president was to pass an executive order that you know trans to the

00:13:59.460 bathrooms and and and unraveled trump's policy at the border right so those are those were 80 20

00:14:07.180 issues and he grabbed the thin end of both of those issues his first day in office so if those

00:14:13.860 were if those were your super stimuli uh as they were for many many millions of americans i get it

00:14:19.820 i get i mean the democrats were insane on on those issues uh i mean to call any concern about the

00:14:27.980 border racism, right? I mean, that was suicidal politics. I mean, it was just the dumbest thing

00:14:39.160 imaginable until you get to the trans thing, which was even dumber. So, I mean, the fact that Kamala

00:14:47.240 Harris couldn't speak even two intelligible sentences accounting for her change of heart

00:14:57.160 around taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgery

00:15:00.120 for incarcerated illegal immigrants.

00:15:03.940 I mean, that's largely why she didn't win.

00:15:08.860 I mean, probably the most effective political ad

00:15:11.440 of, I mean, if not our lifetime, you know,

00:15:15.120 several decades was, you know,

00:15:16.860 she's for they, them, he's for you, right?

00:15:19.440 I mean, I think they put 30% of their ad spent

00:15:22.000 onto that ad.

00:15:23.600 But it would have been so easy for a sane,

00:15:25.680 a morally sane candidate to have said something rational it when asked about that that policy

00:15:32.480 but because of the the constraints of wokeism which i you know you know haven't dissipated as

00:15:39.680 much as i would have hoped at this point i mean we can we can talk about whether we're

00:15:44.640 we're going to get a resurgence of moral confusion from the democrats and now in the

00:15:49.680 you know on the on the heels of their uh you know victory you know their their sweep of um

00:15:56.560 the elections but i don't know what lesson they're going to draw there but i i fear that

00:16:01.600 the ideologues on the left could capture more of the conversation because many democrats are going

00:16:07.920 to draw the lesson that they don't actually have to moderate that really what the the the center

00:16:13.600 of moral gravity here is more progressivism, more activism, more, you know, woke two point,

00:16:20.240 I mean, woke, AOC said woke 1.0 is crazy. But, you know, what is woke 2.0 in her mind or in the

00:16:26.780 minds of anyone else who's in a position to steer the Democratic Party? I don't know. I'm worried

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00:17:51.060 The worrying thing for me is, look, we talk about policies and obviously the Democrats were insane.

00:17:57.580 I think we can all agree with that.

00:17:59.240 To me, that wasn't even the most dangerous thing.

00:18:01.680 It was their rhetoric.

00:18:02.720 They were so antagonistic.

00:18:05.060 It felt that they were just driving a wedge between about 11% of this country and the other 89%.

00:18:12.840 And you look at America and you go, well, it already feels incredibly divided.

00:18:18.960 Can we really take woke 2.0 or is everything just going to implode as a result?

00:18:25.460 Yeah, so let's table woke 2.0 for a second because I think that's a big conversation.

00:18:32.100 But the, I mean, in defense of Democrats,

00:18:38.780 it's amazing to see how little traction criticism of Trump ever got

00:18:48.680 even when he was visibly breaking our democracy.

00:18:53.040 Again, based on pure selfishness.

00:18:55.960 I mean, we had, just to remind you,

00:18:57.240 we had a president who a sitting president who was trying to steal an election all the while

00:19:06.200 saying it was being stolen from him right like he was engaged in creating this fraud this enormous

00:19:13.160 lie running the risk of shattering our society with a with a conspiracy theory and producing

00:19:19.160 political violence and then he produced political violence right and did did precious little to stop

00:19:25.800 it for hours as literally the congress people were being hunted in the capitol right and then

00:19:31.080 that whole thing got spun as as what a false flag operation by the the fbi i mean like you know you

00:19:37.240 had tucker carlson you know and and the other you know meme lords trying to spin this thing as having

00:19:43.080 nothing to do with anything that there were no stakes right this these are all just people

00:19:46.920 larping or they they got they got let in by the cops you know it was nothing was ever at stake

00:19:52.600 uh it certainly wasn't a riot um i mean this was like just a just a desecration of of

00:20:01.000 our democracy and it was a quite a consequential one and there were moments where that re it really

00:20:05.240 could have become a proper emergency i mean like you know had had mike pence caved in and done what

00:20:13.160 trump was urging him to do really i mean again the guy's life was almost certain certainly in

00:20:19.880 jeopardy because of what how the president was behaving at that moment had he caved in you

00:20:25.320 know i don't you know who knows what would have happened right so it's it's this is a man who

00:20:30.600 was willing to play a game of chicken with with american history and again purely it's not that

00:20:37.720 there's no some high there's not a higher motive here it's not like we were in war with a war with

00:20:42.680 a superpower and he had to claim you know wartime powers because otherwise you know everything was

00:20:49.000 going to be ruined no this is a guy who just wants to be rich and famous and and and extract the next

00:20:58.120 ruble from the next deal that he i mean it's just i mean does anyone think that um

00:21:08.040 if maduro had been you know smart enough to buy a billion dollars worth of trump's meme coin that

00:21:13.880 we've gone into Venezuela. I mean, it's like that's the world. The fact that that's even

00:21:19.940 plausible when I state it that way, that's the measure of how much damage has been done to the

00:21:24.940 brand of America. And also Venezuela. Well, I mean, Venezuela, but I mean, to take it out of

00:21:33.300 Venezuela, if the mullahs in Tehran had offered Trump and Whitcoff a multi-billion dollar resort

00:21:42.740 deal on the persian gulf what would be our iran policy i don't think anyone knows right i mean

00:21:49.940 that that's the thing but you could not have said that of any other american president in our

00:21:55.380 lifetime and that and so trump has created that world where we have a country that stands for

00:22:01.940 nothing apart from eking out what you know you can have whatever advantage the president can get

00:22:09.300 personally right i mean like we have we have a country that will not judge the moral integrity

00:22:16.260 of any other nation now i mean he he vilifies our allies and tariffs them to into oblivion

00:22:23.540 or threatens to and he strangely lionizes our genuine enemies like putin right and and um so

00:22:33.060 it's i mean it's been i mean there there really needs to be a reckoning we need a some kind of

00:22:38.420 hard reset of of america's role in the world ultimately in 2028 you know hopefully with the

00:22:45.300 same administration um but i mean we're not we're certainly not out of the woods he's got two more

00:22:52.780 years of his his tenure here so like who knows what's going to happen in his lame duck phase

00:22:58.660 he's not obviously not going to admit to himself or anyone else that he's a lame duck so and he

00:23:03.140 still has a tremendous amount of power as president i mean he's going to be investigated

00:23:07.280 and maybe impeached.

00:23:09.000 I mean, it'll be, um,

00:23:10.880 there'll be certainly more friction

00:23:12.280 based on the results of these elections.

00:23:14.560 But, um, he can create

00:23:16.900 a tremendous amount of harm,

00:23:18.320 and I do worry now

00:23:20.660 that the reckoning,

00:23:22.120 that the cleaning of House

00:23:24.440 that needs to happen here

00:23:25.720 is going to be perceived

00:23:26.860 by most people right of center

00:23:30.100 as just more cynical lawfare, right?

00:23:33.160 Like, this is just, you know,

00:23:34.120 like, an investigation of his cronies,

00:23:36.420 like let me take the corruption piece which everyone really should be nauseated by i mean

00:23:42.580 this is not investigating him for the stormy daniels payment i mean there there is so much

00:23:49.860 there to investigate and to prosecute i mean and if we do if if by magic he and his fellow enablers

00:23:58.740 haven't broken laws well then obviously we don't have the right laws right so we you know so

00:24:03.780 So DeSantis has, I mean, there are many people making the same noise as we, you should not

00:24:08.120 be able to trade stocks in these roles, right?

00:24:10.920 I mean, this is just, it's insane that we had Trump, I mean, Trump has been placing more

00:24:16.040 stock trades than I think, you know, like all U.S. presidents combined in American history.

00:24:21.840 I mean, it's just like, it's insane what has happened in advance of each iteration of his

00:24:30.400 tariff policy, for instance.

00:24:31.860 I mean, the people who are tracking, you know, what people are doing on the stock market.

00:24:37.220 Well, Sam, this is where I hear my inner voice of the reasonable right here.

00:24:41.680 And I was going to make the joke he's almost made as much money on the stock market as Nancy Pelosi.

00:24:45.700 No, but if you cared about Pelosi, this is 100x Pelosi.

00:24:49.300 I know.

00:24:49.720 But I guess what I'm saying is, and we actually had this conversation with David Pakman earlier in the trip as well,

00:24:55.700 is this is all feeling a bit Russian to me.

00:24:59.200 Because in Russia, everyone's guilty.

00:25:00.680 everyone at the top of politics commits crime and bribery and all because that's the only way you

00:25:06.260 can that's that's how they all operate right and then the people who it is convenient in that

00:25:12.920 moment to politically persecute they are the ones that get persecuted and now you've got to the

00:25:18.020 point where everyone's preemptively parting in themselves and their children and their associates

00:25:22.500 or whatever so i i everything you're saying makes perfect sense but i think if you were to apply

00:25:28.740 that same magnifying glass to much of the left you'd also get very similar things but but it's

00:25:35.220 this it's the scale that is just i mean they're everything trump has done i mean there are

00:25:41.700 and this is going to sound hyperbolic but i i would bet anything there are a hundred things

00:25:50.940 trump has done right i mean it's not a thousand but let's just i'll be conservative here a hundred

00:25:58.180 things he's done that are just totally unprecedented in their level of corruption and, I mean,

00:26:05.380 treasonously corrupt. I mean, just, it's unbelievable that we have a person in the Oval

00:26:11.700 Office who is behaving this way. Can you give some examples? Just go like one, two, three. Do

00:26:17.120 you see what I mean? Well, I mean, so it's specifically with the, with, um, on the topic

00:26:22.740 of corruption again everything i mean you have to ask ask yourself what what was the tariff policy

00:26:30.660 for i'm like so it was well it's revealed when you know he puts a 46 tariff on vietnam and their

00:26:39.680 response is to green light a resort deal for the trump family and then the tariff comes off right

00:26:44.680 like i mean that that's so is there a law against that apparently not i mean it remains to be seen

00:26:49.980 I mean, I don't, I don't actually know, but it's like, it's very hard to create a system

00:26:57.240 of governance that is immune to the predations of a motivated psychopath who you just put into the

00:27:06.060 role of, into the most powerful role in that system, right? So it may be impossible. I mean,

00:27:13.440 I think James Madison said it was impossible to create a government that is so, you know,

00:27:19.340 perfectly tuned that it's going to work like clockwork even when you have someone of of the

00:27:25.860 lowest conceivable character in the driver's seat right but that's what we have we have someone of

00:27:30.700 the lowest conceivable character in the driver's seat and and that has been obvious for a decade

00:27:35.580 right this is not there's no nothing nothing has been hidden right so anyone who is surprised

00:27:41.680 to on any level to discover who trump is now has been completely asleep i mean this is this this

00:27:48.360 is just there's and i'm not even sure they they again i don't i i really have no theory of mind

00:27:53.820 for anyone who is uh only now starting to feel that maybe trump was well i gave you the theory

00:28:03.080 hold on but i gave it to you and this is where we they just don't like that he he didn't care

00:28:06.960 about groceries or their groceries when when he was waging war in iran i think the the fair

00:28:13.060 steel man version of this certainly for the people who were prepared to go either way

00:28:17.940 which are in the minority in this country admittedly but but they're the key piece right

00:28:21.800 they're the thing that moves elections arguably you i think it's fair to say is what i said earlier

00:28:27.260 which is you have a binary choice yeah and you can have you know trans no no i'm not i'm not

00:28:34.260 talking about those people so i i get the people who right would say okay and this is like and

00:28:39.900 i mean ben shapiro when i debated ben shapiro on my podcast he essentially articulated this

00:28:46.080 position in response to which i don't have all that much to say in the end and he said listen

00:28:50.440 this we're talking about the real world here i had a choice between kamala harris and and

00:28:55.860 donald trump um i don't have to like the character of the president or admire it or be at all

00:29:02.400 confused about it to to feel that given what i would what i can reasonably expect her i'm just

00:29:11.080 putting words in his mouth this is not what he said but this is the subtext given what you know

00:29:15.620 I had every reason to believe Kamala Harris's positions

00:29:18.440 would be, especially with regard to Israel.

00:29:22.060 This is, it was a forced choice.

00:29:23.460 And I took the, you know, the person who,

00:29:32.120 warts and all, was gonna have a better policy

00:29:35.300 with respect to the things I most care about.

00:29:38.040 And for many people, it's a very short list.

00:29:40.600 And for many people, there was only one thing

00:29:43.200 that list right in ben's case i think policy with respect to israel was i mean it's not the only

00:29:50.400 thing but it had to be very high for him and i get it i mean the the kinds of noises that you heard

00:29:57.120 from the democratic party post october 7th i mean biden was good for about two months maybe but then

00:30:06.000 there was a kind of a great unraveling of moral clarity and now we have among democrats seemingly

00:30:12.960 a litmus test uh you know a kind of loyalty test that you have to use this word genocide in a way

00:30:19.360 that no one used it up until a few years ago or no sane person used it this way up until a few years

00:30:26.000 ago um and describe you know what israel did in gaza as a as a genocide and and you know i think

00:30:33.520 we're um i mean seeing that if you're a single issue voter i get it so you know the people i'm

00:30:39.520 deeply confused by are the people who have always been part of the MAGA cult where I may love the

00:30:47.020 man like he is kind of a religious figure so if any of those people are being picked off now

00:30:52.300 by what the price of eggs right I don't I don't know how like I I don't have a theory of mind

00:30:59.940 for them I don't know what it would it was never clear to me what it would take because it was

00:31:03.800 always so obvious that this is a man you couldn't admire well look let's let's steel man that so

00:31:09.840 there's a lot of people who voted for trump who probably also would have voted for someone like

00:31:15.800 bernie because those were the forgotten majority they were the people who had never their concerns

00:31:22.180 had never been addressed frequently but it was always obvious that he wasn't going to address

00:31:27.200 their concerns yeah but sam if nobody ever addresses your concerns if nobody ever cares

00:31:32.120 what you your problems if people always ignore you if people in areas let's be fair like this

00:31:37.640 thinks you're just one layer above scum and all of a sudden someone comes along and says that he

00:31:43.720 does care even if he doesn't that's still better than than any politician who just pretty much

00:31:49.800 ignores you and talks to you with contempt okay but this guy was always again everything's in

00:31:55.240 plain view this is a guy who's selling meme coins and gold watches and golden sneakers and other

00:32:02.920 crap to his fans and and in the case of meme coins doing an actual rug pull where he makes

00:32:11.660 billions and they lose billions right I mean people have lost billions on his crappy meme

00:32:17.320 coins I agree with Sam that that's indefensible but to me correct me if I'm wrong the meme coin

00:32:21.760 came after the election wasn't it right before inauguration there's a broader thing going on

00:32:28.100 which is but he was always that guy and that's the thing he always had contempt for his fans he

00:32:33.360 he's the guy who said i could shoot someone in times square and not lose a single vote

00:32:37.900 right he's saying my fans have don't care if i commit murder right my fans are are psychopaths

00:32:47.200 i mean that that's the subtext like that like they have no moral standard there is no there's

00:32:52.800 i i i do not have to worry about the maintenance of my reputation with these people because they're

00:33:00.400 barbarians i mean that is that's the subtext i always heard and it was loud like like they should

00:33:07.680 have heard it too this was an insult to his fans and they didn't hear it for some reason they just

00:33:13.120 kept fucking laughing um and so and again i'm not convinced that i do think we have a a radical core

00:33:22.480 of the maga cult i don't know what percentage of american society this is but maybe it's 25

00:33:27.360 that cannot be disillusioned on this point like i think he will i think he is his approval rating

00:33:33.200 can sink to more or less where it has i mean it was like around 30 percent now but i think there

00:33:40.480 is a floor here beneath which you have people who just um again it's i mean i'm very familiar with

00:33:48.880 with cults i mean it's amazing how resistant to falsifiability uh uh the you know a cultic

00:33:58.240 attachment is i mean literally you can have someone who predicts the flying saucer is going

00:34:03.520 to land on thursday night at eight o'clock and beam us up and then everyone's waiting on the

00:34:08.320 back lawn on thursday and nothing happens and half the people leave because they they realize

00:34:14.160 they're in the in the presence of stark delusion but the other half just double down they have a

00:34:19.040 rationale for why it didn't work and i mean and now a lot of people are have a rationale that you

00:34:24.560 know our man was just misled by the evil jews right i mean the bb got into his head led him

00:34:31.280 into a war of choice that you know i mean it's easy to it's easy to overlook the fact that they're

00:34:37.440 strangely denigrating trump in in this like like so trump was misled by bb really that's that's

00:34:43.040 your guy that he he just could he couldn't figure out what what was what and uh bb outsmarted him

00:34:48.880 but they're but they're the conspiracy thinking that he has leveraged in our society this is one

00:34:55.280 of the most irresponsible things he's done he's just ample and he's his his political tenure

00:35:00.240 started with a conspiracy the the birther uh conspiracy against obama and he has just danced

00:35:08.400 from one conspiracy to the next i mean the epstein story was the only thing interestingly that that

00:35:15.040 threatened to ruin his reputation among his fans but um yeah there'll be some conspiracy that will

00:35:23.120 will absorb this disgrace for him,

00:35:27.340 and it will place the blame elsewhere

00:35:29.900 for I don't know how many millions of Americans,

00:35:32.320 but it's got to be tens of millions.

00:35:35.180 I think it's interesting what you say.

00:35:36.800 I was going to move on,

00:35:37.520 but I think the Bibi tricked Trump into attacking Iran.

00:35:41.320 I mean, it's a complicated one

00:35:42.600 because I do think Israel sees it

00:35:45.780 as it being in its own interest for the United States

00:35:48.360 to help in destroying Iran's offensive weapons system,

00:35:51.600 even if they don't have nuclear weapons but i i it seems to me like actually that is a mechanism to

00:35:58.560 protect trump from criticism and in people's minds because they can say well it's not trump

00:36:03.120 he got tricked he israel did this uh which i always thought was a very strange argument i

00:36:09.520 mean first of all literally every country in the world is trying to shape american foreign policy

00:36:14.480 in its direction because america is the most powerful country in the world russia ukraine

00:36:19.520 Israel, Qatar, every Qatar, China, every country in the world is attempting to persuade the

00:36:25.640 president of the United States and other people in the U.S. to do something. But ultimately,

00:36:30.580 it is up to the people in charge of the United States to make those decisions. And if they make

00:36:35.020 a bad decision, which I personally think Iran was, that's on them. Well, it is. And also,

00:36:42.760 people are forgetting that on any given day, Trump will tell Bibi to not do something and

00:36:49.280 bb will will comply right i mean like literally call your planes back you know so it's it's just

00:36:56.800 that's just not what's been happening right it's delusional i mean there's so much delusion required

00:37:02.720 to have supported this guy um again i'm not discounting the fact that you know the the

00:37:09.280 forced choice if you if you had a very short list of concerns and you were very worried about the

00:37:14.640 the wokeness, destroying everything you care about.

00:37:18.180 I get how it was possible to be radicalized there.

00:37:20.620 But to have ever thought this man was competent

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00:37:27.820 was obviously a delusion from the beginning.

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00:39:21.100 Let's move on to the woke thing then, because, I mean, I am one of those people.

00:39:27.080 I think, Francis, I think to some extent you are one of those people who thinks wokeness is,

00:39:31.020 I mean, it's antithetical to our civilization's core values.

00:39:34.700 it entirely extremely dangerous was being practiced not just at the level of the presidency

00:39:41.100 but throughout every major institution in america fair so yeah yeah i mean you you and i might

00:39:47.840 draw the line slightly in slightly different places but trans women or women's i mean so

00:39:55.400 just to be just to be clear like i'm so like i wouldn't necessarily want to sign up

00:40:02.680 to, I mean, there are many people who have gone hard against wokeness in general, or, you know,

00:40:12.440 the trans thing in particular, and have said things that I can't defend. So like, I'm not,

00:40:19.080 you know, in whoever, you know, Matt Walsh's lane on this, right? But yes, there was clearly a,

00:40:29.100 there's the activist class among Democrats had far too we're talking well you know eight percent of

00:40:37.420 of Democrats maybe had far too much power and have has they get it's I don't know what when

00:40:45.900 the rubble when the when the smoke clears and we can investigate the rubble I will know what

00:40:50.780 is currently true I really don't know what's currently true but for years

00:40:57.680 this hysteria has just vitiated our elite institutions universities newspapers scientific

00:41:06.780 journals i mean it's just been appalling i mean you literally had the the best journals on earth

00:41:13.240 you know both medical and you know general scientific um publishing editorials disavowing

00:41:20.940 the use of the word woman right so so like again i don't know everything she said on social media

00:41:25.820 I mean, I'm a fan of J.K. Rowling and I would defend her against most of her attackers, but I'm sure she has been pushed to the brink and said something on Twitter that I haven't read and probably wouldn't defend.

00:41:36.240 but still like her her fundamental allergy to this particular on this particular front in the

00:41:43.040 war of ideas i mean just this this um uh attack on the use of the word woman uh and uh where we

00:41:51.120 have we're condemned until the end of the world to talk about menstruators and you know people

00:41:55.120 with ovaries i mean that it was so idiotic and so offensive um yeah i mean it's just the fact

00:42:05.040 that it captured our lead institutions is deeply embarrassing and eventually people will people

00:42:12.560 who are part of this lunacy will forget they you know their contributions to it and everyone's

00:42:18.160 going to look back and say you know can you believe that i mean what you know that seems

00:42:22.320 incredibly optimistic to me sam this is where i was going with all of this you think we're going

00:42:26.080 to be fighting over the world use of woman first of all i think it's important to broaden this out

00:42:30.480 and to recognize some things that sometimes people forget about when they talk about wokeness

00:42:34.720 wokeness was not just about trans women and women jk rowlings and nazi and whatever

00:42:39.440 i see a direct connection between wokeness and open borders there's a direct connection between

00:42:45.680 you what you rightly see i think is hysteria and stupidity and you know whatever else you want to

00:42:52.080 label it as when it comes to israel because israel is the oppressor palestinians are oppressed this

00:42:57.920 whole thing so it's not just about it was embarrassing it was outright dangerous yeah to

00:43:05.040 to the survival and flourishing of our societies in my opinion now we are now in a position

00:43:11.600 after the midterms where nobody really knows exactly how it's going to go but there's a very

00:43:16.480 real possibility that in the same way that you would say well all these people voted for trump

00:43:20.880 because they hated wokeness and they they were blind to this well a lot of people voted against

00:43:27.200 the republicans now because of high energy prices and so on and there's a very real possibility now

00:43:33.920 that you're going to get a wokeness like you haven't seen before don't you think i'm worried

00:43:39.420 about that i mean i think that's so just to to um link that to my deepest concern here i mean so

00:43:48.100 so the the path in my view the path to fascism in america is for the left to get sufficiently crazy

00:43:55.800 that only the right will do.

00:43:58.360 If the DSA captures the Democratic Party

00:44:02.220 to a significant degree,

00:44:03.220 if in 2028, say, we have a Mamdani-like candidate

00:44:07.780 who can be credibly tarred as a communist

00:44:17.200 or a communist-adjacent idiot

00:44:20.140 on all things economic,

00:44:23.280 leaving the wokeness aside,

00:44:24.440 I think in a forced choice between fascism and communism, America picks fascism a hundred times out of a hundred. So I just think that's the society we're living in.

00:44:35.080 So if we put up a sufficiently radical, and in the worst case, kind of a red-green alliance, useful idiot, you know, or genuine ideologue, again, kind of an Islamo-leftist, you know, marriage, you know, DSA plus some entanglement with Islam,

00:45:01.560 um i think you could literally elect anyone right of center it could be my pillow guy it could be

00:45:09.760 don jr it could be a genuinely scary right-wing ideologue um it could be tucker carlson i mean

00:45:19.060 like it could be anyone against that right so if the left gets sufficiently crazy um that's

00:45:26.140 the failure mode there is not that we get you know islamo-leftism in the in the in the white

00:45:33.820 house i think we get something truly appalling you know on the right um so that's but that's

00:45:40.380 what i'm worried about but yeah i'm i'm i share your concern that the lesson that the democrats

00:45:46.140 will draw here is that the sky's the limit we really can do no wrong there is no left-leaning

00:45:53.820 message however uh bizarre that um will count against us effectively now because we you know

00:46:03.820 we're part of this you know blue tsunami you know again to imagine a um an el sayed say uh

00:46:11.980 like candidate for um the presidency in 2028 i don't think that candidate stands a chance of

00:46:18.620 winning in america for a lot largely because of uh how anchored at least half of americans are i

00:46:26.780 mean it's probably more like 60 percent are to um some version of you know you know christian

00:46:33.180 religiosity uh but they're they're clearly that doesn't get them so then then what is possible

00:46:41.660 on the right in response that there i really think you could get um someone even less qualified

00:46:48.540 than trump and more ideological than trump in trump's defense you know one of the sins he

00:46:54.620 doesn't have is a commitment to an eye a world view right like he doesn't have anything he's

00:47:02.460 willing to to uh to stand behind beyond his own narrowly construed self-interest so um

00:47:09.820 No, I think you could get, you know, you could get effectively President Nick Fuentes if you promote it.

00:47:20.580 If it's a forced choice between El Sayed and Nick Fuentes, I think we go right in this country.

00:47:28.040 And no matter how dangerous and explicitly unethical that right-wing message is.

00:47:38.360 But it's also as well, and we have to be honest about this, you know, we're talking about Trump and the voter has to take some responsibility, as do the politicians that have preceded those presidents.

00:47:52.560 If you look at Trump, why was the main reason Trump got elected? No more forever wars.

00:47:57.420 It's because people were burnt out from Afghanistan, Iraq. They were sick of the lies.

00:48:01.960 They were sick of this idea that you could go over to another country, you could bring democracy,

00:48:07.180 and all that happened is that you were there for two decades, and you pumped in trillions,

00:48:11.280 and then at the end, what were you left with?

00:48:14.560 Yeah, so I think the lesson that people are drawing from that admittedly depressing history is isolationism,

00:48:25.940 and I think that's a disaster.

00:48:27.360 I mean, so American isolationism is synonymous with the ascendance of our enemies.

00:48:35.340 You know, it's the ascendance of China.

00:48:37.080 It's the ascendance.

00:48:38.040 So do we want more CCP influence globally?

00:48:41.860 Is that really the goal here?

00:48:43.500 Well, okay, then be, you know, an America first isolationist.

00:48:47.160 Do you want Russia to be even more revanchist than it is?

00:48:53.580 And, I mean, do you want NATO to properly dissolve?

00:49:01.300 I mean, even now, our allies or former allies can be forgiven for thinking that NATO has, in effect, dissolved.

00:49:11.380 I mean, who thinks we're going to come to the rescue of Poland tomorrow if Russia invades Poland?

00:49:18.440 I mean, so it's, we need a liberal world order.

00:49:25.280 We really need that.

00:49:26.460 First of all, America has been the primary beneficiary of a liberal world order for 80 years.

00:49:33.060 I mean, that's just a fact.

00:49:34.280 I mean, we, like, we have, it's, Trump is right to point out that there's been a free rider problem, right?

00:49:40.840 One of the good effects of Trumpist craziness has been that Europe has woken up and realized its need to shoulder the expense of its own defense or take responsibility for its own defense, however belatedly.

00:49:58.860 um he was right to castigate uh uh i think the germans it was for um you know just their their

00:50:09.420 happy dependence on on russian oil right so um so but the idea that america shouldn't have a

00:50:23.580 leadership role in the world and that we don't have a vested interest in global order that is

00:50:30.380 that is not just this you know a return to um you know spheres of influence and uh

00:50:41.420 just you know pure power politics it has been a mutually beneficial arrangement for us to

00:50:49.660 shoulder a disproportionate burden of being the world's cop right we have not merely been stolen

00:50:55.100 from sam be fair most people in this country wouldn't see it that way most people look at

00:51:00.300 iraq look at look at afghanistan and that's well no you it's very easy to criticize those wars

00:51:08.380 and how we not so it's there are many things to say about those wars um vietnam for example is

00:51:15.740 another one most people would point out as well yes but it's easy to forget that you know we had

00:51:23.600 a the the actual superpower conflict with the soviet union was a problem for the whole world

00:51:29.880 and it was not obvious how to solve it right and the and the idea that you're just going to have

00:51:34.220 countries falling to to soviet i mean you you can speak to this better than i can the idea that we

00:51:40.520 want to resist that and resisted militarily in the end that was not um that was not crazy uh now um

00:51:52.280 i mean the the war in afghanistan was totally justifiable that we launched it in an effort to

00:52:01.480 get al-qaeda then we prosecuted it badly and we stayed there for too long and we were and

00:52:09.000 it is completely understandable to draw the lesson that nation building is a project to which we are

00:52:17.240 not well suited but it but again it's hard to to it's easy to forget um with the benefit of

00:52:26.520 hindsight now how tempting it was to see that it was possible drawing the lesson for let me take

00:52:35.560 the aftermath of world war ii i mean it is a it's amazing to consider that we bombed germany and

00:52:43.400 japan nearly to oblivion and then help rebuild both of those societies

00:52:50.520 and they became allies in a few short years i mean how i mean it's like it's a double miracle

00:52:56.440 right so you you have that experience i mean i mean

00:52:58.920 mean Japanese nationalism you know with you know kamikazes and all I mean it's not jihadism but

00:53:08.120 it's it was damn close right I mean it's it was it was just as you know psychotically committed

00:53:14.580 to a cause as you can get without you know a proper notion of of martyrdom and and you know

00:53:21.920 paradise awaiting you with 72 virgins right um the fact that we dropped two nuclear bombs

00:53:29.680 on that society in addition to all the you know the fire bombings of of cities um

00:53:38.480 and in i think it was seven years about like 1952 we left and they were allies i mean so

00:53:48.560 So it's easy to have drawn the lesson that nation building is, in principle, possible.

00:53:54.860 And what we didn't understand was how difficult, how much culture matters, how much religion

00:54:01.340 in particular, in my view, matters.

00:54:06.320 And yeah, I mean, we deluded ourselves into thinking that people were, you know, if enough

00:54:12.000 people just dyed their finger and and and vote voted in an election in Iraq and Afghanistan

00:54:19.240 you know these these would be healthy democracies right and and the other problem is Sam is like the

00:54:28.240 examples that you were quoting as incredible as they are and as wonderful as those societies

00:54:35.600 turned out to be it's 80 years ago people are going you know it's like a football team going

00:54:41.760 well these tactics work and you go yeah mate they worked in 1945 it's 2026 it's the tactics that

00:54:48.240 that's what a lot of people would say the tactics don't work anymore look at the deficit 40 trillion

00:54:53.260 and as well sam you know there's a lot of people in this country if you look at it right the way

00:54:58.140 through history have always been isolationist you know you didn't want to get involved not you

00:55:03.760 personally the americans didn't want to get involved in world war one you didn't want to

00:55:07.980 involved in world war ii and there were understandable reasons for that in both instances

00:55:12.620 by the way this has always been the a large part of americans position which is we've got our own

00:55:20.220 problems here it's a long way away we need to prioritize america right position but again

00:55:26.220 there's there's so much confusion about what is real here i mean if you ask most americans

00:55:32.540 uh about foreign aid for instance and you say i mean there's there i might get these numbers a

00:55:41.180 little wrong but i mean this this is the gist of what's what polls have shown for quite some time

00:55:46.700 um if you ask uh well do we spend too much on foreign aid vast numbers of americans say yeah

00:55:54.060 we've spent way too much on foreign aid um how much should we spend and they'll give a number

00:55:59.180 that's like 10x what we actually spent right i mean so it's there this is not a coherent

00:56:05.420 worldview when you actually drill down on it i mean there there it's just a fact that we have

00:56:10.780 problems that are global that can only be solved globally right i mean i'm sure we'll talk about

00:56:16.780 ai at some point ai is one of those problems i mean we need to solve this this um coordination

00:56:24.620 problem that we can't even address at the moment but we i mean we are in a arms race and we have

00:56:29.580 to get out of an arms race and we have to figure out how to build this technology in a way that

00:56:36.380 one isn't going to destroy us and two could benefit us in an uncountable number of ways that

00:56:44.300 that um i mean in success there's an unimaginable amount of wealth that could be spread around

00:56:51.180 everyone right but we but we have a political problem to solve first i mean the problem is so

00:56:56.380 bad that if god came down and handed us the perfectly aligned ai right the the ai that's

00:57:03.180 never going to go rogue that's never on its own gonna go terminator on us uh it's just this this

00:57:10.060 oracle and you know perpetual motion machine of wealth creation even that just again just handed

00:57:19.020 to us could fatally destabilize our world given how riven we are by politics right so we have to

00:57:27.260 figure out how to cooperate at a global scale in order in order to solve global problems and here

00:57:32.620 you have a a philosophy that i mean trump doesn't even hold i mean again he holds no philosophy

00:57:40.460 but this this is this spirit of isolationism is antithetical to that and trump himself as an

00:57:47.020 incompetent and a grifter and a maniac is antithetical to that uh the cult the cult of

00:57:53.820 know-nothings around him you know just that has been you know everyone around him has passed

00:57:59.660 through this sieve of loyalty tests i mean these are just people who are just willing to eat

00:58:05.180 for him and lie perpetually for him as a loyalty test i mean that's who he that's who has survived

00:58:12.300 contact with this man strangely our own some of the wealthiest and most successful people in our

00:58:19.180 society have passed this test i mean the our own you know oligarchs have um have been willing to

00:58:27.340 to to conform to uh kind of these these cultic parameters so um again it's not it's not a recipe

00:58:36.460 for sane collaboration with allies and allies who can then apply enough pressure to the putins of

00:58:44.860 the world and to the you know the ccps of the world so so as to get something coercive actually

00:58:51.020 done i mean and so that's i mean so one of the the most despicable things he's done and

00:58:57.180 consequential things he's done is you know so fully alienate our allies this is to go back to

00:59:01.100 the war in iran for a second the reason why the war war in iran one reason why it's you know

00:59:06.060 appears to be a terrible failure is that we had we went into it with no allies i mean no one was

00:59:12.460 on board he alienated all of our allies he he tariffed them and insulted them and lied about

00:59:17.420 them and then went into a war and then and said we don't need you people because we've got all

00:59:21.820 the power and then once the strait of hormuz became a problem then he he you know he asked

00:59:28.540 for help and again no one keeps score i mean no one sees the the bluff the bluff get called

00:59:35.740 the humiliation the new bluff the lie to cover the old blood i mean it's just it is one

00:59:42.940 it's just a cascade of embarrassment again and his superpower is that he's incapable of shame

00:59:51.020 right so he literally he he doesn't notice that he's just lost face in a way that would cause

00:59:58.700 most people to want to kill themselves right but sam this is when people would say look the

01:00:05.800 policeman of the world doesn't work look at the war in iran and there are a lot of people but

01:00:12.320 that's what alliances are for i mean so so it's like we are the we're the most powerful we're the

01:00:17.380 center of the alliance but we need allies clearly we need allies and and so and yes it was nato

01:00:24.320 wasn't perfect but nato's was better than no nato i mean so it is you just have to ask me filter by

01:00:30.480 this question how much has putin has putin benefited in his own mind whatever is in fact real

01:00:39.360 how much you know how much of the time that putin has spent watching trump's career has he been

01:00:45.840 gratified by what has been happening and how much of the time has he spent uh feeling uh

01:00:51.600 destabilized by it or or the feeling that it was obviously to his disadvantage i mean there's been

01:00:57.900 a few sanctions there and a few but but generally speaking i think he has watched

01:01:05.400 a colossal act of vandalism be perpetrated on his enemy america by america and we have

01:01:16.020 vandalized our own house and i think it's been i'm sure it's been immensely gratifying to him

01:01:22.400 and so also for the ccp again there's not there it's not that there aren't you know marginalia

01:01:28.320 there where you know trump has been hard on china in in in moments but um and even on russia in

01:01:36.280 moments but generally speaking we have he has presided over a radical diminishment in american

01:01:43.380 power and influence. And that's largely been a story of having alienated all of our allies.

01:01:49.340 Sam, you mentioned AI. There's a lot I could challenge there, but...

01:01:54.580 Challenge the worst thing. I mean, what am I actually wrong about?

01:01:59.040 Where you're wrong, I think, well, there's two pieces to this. And one of the things that's

01:02:04.540 happened with the Iran war is Francis and I think it's pretty much the most important issue of the

01:02:08.740 last year. And we've talked about it so much that even our audience who really care about geopolitics

01:02:14.260 are not that interested in it. But I do think this, from our perspective, it's worth exploring

01:02:20.520 this with you because you're a smart guy and we've always respected your opinion on these things.

01:02:24.560 However, our attitude to this latest bit of the Iran war, if you frame it like that, 12-day war,

01:02:30.420 you take a shot at their nuclear facilities, seems perfectly sensible, even though military

01:02:36.380 analysts we've spoken to since would argue it was never particularly likely to succeed but let's say

01:02:42.140 even there was a five percent chance of succeeding to me it's a no-brainer we do not want iran to

01:02:47.180 have a nuclear weapon the issue with this conflict is and this was explained to us when we came to

01:02:53.820 the u.s last time it was right as the ward just was breaking and our attitude was we don't know

01:02:58.700 we're here to find out initially kind of skeptical that this is likely to lead to good things but

01:03:03.820 let's find out let the coin is in the air i think was the phrase what we used i used and then we

01:03:09.580 talked to lots of people both on that on camera and off camera and it became a number of things

01:03:15.180 became clear number one there was no great strategy here this was a sugar high from venezuela you know

01:03:22.060 i'm on a roll here we'll we'll do this um much like with putin's invasion of ukraine there was

01:03:30.220 a lack of accurate information for the reason i think that you articulated which is if you

01:03:35.100 optimize for loyalty you don't get people who are going to tell you the truth about certain things

01:03:39.980 but ultimately robert pape explained this to us very well robert pape is i mean he's

01:03:48.300 i i know don't get me started on robert pape but he he he is he's a misinformation artist on this

01:03:54.060 topic okay well let me present the argument then you can explain where it's wrong because

01:03:58.220 I found this before with the Iran war,

01:04:00.260 is when you mention certain names,

01:04:01.560 people, you know, start to get upset or whatever.

01:04:05.100 But actually, they don't have the counter-argument.

01:04:07.100 Now, maybe you do.

01:04:08.160 Let's hear it.

01:04:08.800 I absolutely do.

01:04:09.520 Right.

01:04:10.100 But the argument was that because of the nature of Iran itself,

01:04:14.960 because of how big it is, because of the geography of it,

01:04:18.140 because it has the control over the show from us,

01:04:20.880 this was always...

01:04:21.940 And literally, the problem with what you've just said

01:04:23.900 about Robert Papers,

01:04:25.100 literally everything you told us in March or April

01:04:28.540 It was April.

01:04:29.180 April.

01:04:29.860 It's turned out to be true pretty much to the letter.

01:04:32.960 Well, what's turned out to be true?

01:04:34.080 Just the fact that the war has not been won?

01:04:35.720 No.

01:04:36.260 He explained how exactly it would go

01:04:38.960 and what the mechanism or leverage Trump had

01:04:42.760 and what the mechanism or leverage Iran had

01:04:45.260 and what Iran would do at every phase.

01:04:47.540 And so he basically said,

01:04:48.640 they will close the Strait of Hormuz.

01:04:50.600 And at this point...

01:04:51.380 But everyone knew that.

01:04:52.180 I mean, I can only assume Trump and Heggs,

01:04:55.800 I mean, as stupid as some of these people are,

01:04:58.160 they had to have been briefed about all i mean everyone i mean for for years and years we knew

01:05:02.160 that fine well let's play your game then if then despite as you say their stupidity they knew all

01:05:07.360 of this what was their plan for when they did that well they clearly had none right right but so but

01:05:14.160 so the the and pape's argument is there is no plan because they have the leverage so unless you're

01:05:20.720 prepared to escalate further there's nothing you can do what does escalate further mean it means

01:05:26.160 you start to land marines on karg island it's not you start to land marines in around proper

01:05:30.880 at which point they escalate well i i don't know so again robert pape is um i don't think he claims

01:05:37.520 to be a military strategist um and that's probably a good thing i think he does actually i think that

01:05:44.880 that's what he studies well he studies i mean so his his um so just to give give a little history

01:05:53.520 here so he's very famous for having um written a uh a book the book is a little confusing because

01:06:01.400 it goes by i think it was published under two titles but certainly one of these titles was

01:06:06.040 dying to win um it's about suicide suicide terrorism let's not get into it because it's

01:06:13.540 gonna just derail the conversation it's a bit much for people just come back to the run thing

01:06:17.880 the argument forget about robert pape forget about all of this the argument was the problem

01:06:22.400 with this war is not that it was badly prosecuted the problem with this war no no it's unwinnable

01:06:29.300 it's unwinnable with allies uh it's unwinnable uh it's unwinnable it's unwinnable with a free

01:06:34.680 world that's willing to take some pain at the pump in order to starve this regime that's

01:06:39.040 miserating its own people there is no doubt that if we wanted to do to iran what we did to germany

01:06:44.580 in japan theoretically we could do what if what if it's just um i mean so the problem is so what is

01:06:53.880 it okay well here's here's the the deeper issue is that we and i don't just mean america i mean

01:07:00.940 the free world we are in a war against jihadism and we've been in a war against jihadism for

01:07:08.600 as long as i've been alive right so and this is an unacknowledged war right like people don't

01:07:15.020 understand this war um they really understand it in israel because it is right it's been on

01:07:22.100 their doorstep since the the moment of their founding even before it's unignorable there

01:07:27.620 but here it's ignorable right here we get a 9-11 we get you know if it's ignorable even in france

01:07:33.720 They get a Bataclan massacre and a Charlie Hebdo massacre, and you get a schoolteacher who gets decapitated in the middle of the street, and there's a certain level of this that they're just willing to tolerate.

01:07:49.480 But we have a global problem with jihadism, and the most excruciating instance of this problem would be a nuclear-armed regime that is jihadist.

01:08:03.720 And that is what Iran could become.

01:08:06.160 Iran has been governed since 79 by jihadists.

01:08:10.820 So these people are really willing to die.

01:08:14.560 They're really willing to see everyone beneath them die.

01:08:18.000 You know, they're quite stoical in the context of their certainty about paradise.

01:08:26.640 I mean, you just have to look at how they fought their side of the war against Iraq.

01:08:31.140 They sent tens of thousands of boys to clear minefields with their lives.

01:08:38.560 Israel had nothing to do with this.

01:08:40.820 There were no Jews involved.

01:08:43.000 America was not part of this.

01:08:46.020 This was Muslim fighting Muslim, right?

01:08:49.280 And they were sending boys across minefields with plastic keys around their necks

01:08:54.800 that were going to open the gates of paradise for them.

01:08:57.340 um and uh and these boys you know some of these boys survived they got to the iraqi side i mean

01:09:05.180 the iraqis were i mean there were literally stories of iraqis like just reduced to tears

01:09:11.860 and being unwilling to fire their rifles at waves of of boys right there's a this is a

01:09:17.920 zombie movie right and some of these boys survived and were you know put in you know

01:09:23.120 detention on the Iraqi side and interviewed i mean like all you can talk these these kids were

01:09:28.700 talked to i'm i agree with you this is this is a a worldview that we have to come to terms with

01:09:35.500 it makes the unthinkable not only thinkable but guaranteed and it's not nationalism and it's not

01:09:41.860 ordinary politics the way robert pape would tell you it is right this is not the prosecution of

01:09:46.300 of nationalistic goals, you know, and ordinary terrestrial grievances. This is true belief

01:09:53.300 in paradise, right? So if we have a jihadist regime armed with nuclear weapons,

01:10:00.180 everything we think we know about nuclear deterrence goes out the window, right?

01:10:04.540 Let's accept this for the sake of argument. The issue, see, because this is what I see now. If I

01:10:08.980 say anything about how this war was a bad idea, I get a bunch of people saying, so you think Iran

01:10:13.840 should have nuclear weapons. No, I don't think Iran should have nuclear weapons. But the question

01:10:17.240 is, what should we do about Iran? Well, the question is, how does prosecuting this war

01:10:21.780 achieve a non-nuclear Iran? As far as I can tell, Iran is way closer to having nukes as a result of

01:10:27.000 this. Well, that may be the case. But again, that's a measure of how ineptly we have done this.

01:10:32.220 Let's say that you've got, I mean, you're probably overestimating the strength of your allies. We

01:10:37.600 know what the British Armed Forces look like at this point. Same with the French. It's not so much

01:10:41.700 a matter of sending in their troops. It's a matter of having agreed about, you know, what the mission

01:10:48.800 is. And what is it, what do you understand to be the correct strategy that wasn't pursued here?

01:10:53.920 What would the world look like if the problem had been sufficiently articulated by a president

01:11:02.580 who actually understood it and could speak honestly about it, and our allies were on board,

01:11:09.560 and so therefore we are willing to watch gas prices climb for a year or two and or and do

01:11:19.880 what we need to do to mitigate that and have our allies in the gulf help us i mean so the amazing

01:11:25.040 thing is we had allies you know oil producing allies who wanted us to win this war against

01:11:30.620 iran almost as much as israel did right but their oil went largely through the share from us which

01:11:36.980 Iran then blocked. So they have the trump card. How do you overcome that? Well, you overcome it

01:11:43.500 by one, understanding that this, it really is, this does not get better. It's never going to

01:11:52.020 get easier to prevent Iran from getting nukes. It's certainly not going to be easier once they

01:11:57.580 have nukes. We know, so we know what happens, let's just kind of reverse engineer it. We know

01:12:02.180 what happens when they get nukes, right?

01:12:05.360 Short of them using nukes and, you know,

01:12:10.680 actually achieving a genocide, which, you know, they're committed.

01:12:15.000 Forget about that.

01:12:15.860 Just, let's just, on the day they have nukes,

01:12:18.980 what can we do to walk that back?

01:12:23.320 Nothing.

01:12:23.940 Basically nothing.

01:12:25.080 But there's nothing we can do now.

01:12:26.320 This is, we've proven that there's nothing we can do.

01:12:29.840 No, no, we haven't.

01:12:30.560 But we, you're pointing to a war that we have barely fought and without allies, other than Israel, without any of the preparation you would have thought we would have.

01:12:46.520 So, I mean, the fact that we don't have enough of our own ordinance, like the fact that we could, we shoot our wad over the course of a very short war, and then we're hearing that we actually don't have enough interceptors for, like, we now have a problem.

01:13:07.980 now china is is eyeing taiwan and we realize we might if even if we wanted to maybe we can't help

01:13:16.460 taiwan because we we certainly don't have you know the spares to to to give to or to sell to ukraine

01:13:23.540 uh because we didn't build enough and it takes us you know four years to build something that

01:13:28.980 we should be able to build in in a month right um and we don't have the drone game that we should

01:13:33.980 have and we've we haven't been we haven't we haven't been supporting ukraine enough in that

01:13:39.420 war to to have learned everything they've learned in their war against i mean we we should be at the

01:13:46.620 absolute forefront of how to wage war in the 21st century and we're clearly not right so there's

01:13:54.220 layers of mistakes here and layers of lack of preparation so i mean i think we we're all right

01:13:58.940 to be genuinely surprised and horrified by the ways in which we were not prepared for Iran's

01:14:06.860 first moves that were all too predictable in this world. Like, so yeah, they're going to bomb

01:14:12.600 our closest military bases, you know, or send drones into our closest military bases and bomb

01:14:21.060 our allies and their, you know, oil refineries. And we were surprised by that. I mean, that was,

01:14:27.100 we didn't have a that wasn't part of our contingency plan we didn't have enough of

01:14:32.060 our own drone defenses or enough interceptors to to deal with that that that okay that's the fact

01:14:38.860 that our actual military power as it is as it is needed now with the the way war is fought now is

01:14:50.220 so apparently ramshackle right that that's not a that's not a that's not a sign that it's impossible

01:14:57.100 to wage this war and and and and win against a power like iran i mean if it if if iran is

01:15:03.180 impossible for us to beat in a war what is china no i see this is why i think the distinction is

01:15:10.220 important uh and it's not this is why i brought up germany and japan if if you take the thesis

01:15:17.260 that iran is about to develop nuclear weapons and the first act that it will take with them is to

01:15:22.060 drop them on a neighbor let's say saudi arabia or israel or whatever and the world must act to stop

01:15:27.900 this then absolutely the united states with allies or without can win that war but what that requires

01:15:35.660 is a level of investment i use investment in inverted commas that is orders of magnitude

01:15:42.060 greater than what's been committed or a willingness to starve their economy and pay some pain ourselves

01:15:48.940 in the meantime the thing is i mean so so so if so we blockade the straight up hormones doesn't

01:15:53.820 get blockaded for us we blockade it right we we destroy their refineries then they will destroy

01:16:01.180 the arab refineries okay but there there's and these are things that take years to get online

01:16:08.140 yeah yeah once it's safe and it won't be safe for many years but i mean again we have i mean

01:16:13.500 this vulnerability so it's hard to you i mean where do you set your way back machine for

01:16:21.180 some sane policy here to have prepared us to to fight this war that was always going to be

01:16:30.780 inevitable like like i mean this is not it was always obvious that iran couldn't get nukes right

01:16:37.740 And so one way to have been confused about this, and many Democrats, I would say most Democrats are still confused about this, is to have thought that the negotiation track, you know, that Obama was on and, you know, Biden, I assume, thought he was perpetuating, that that was going to bear fruit, right?

01:17:04.560 That you could have an Iranian regime, again, a jihadist regime that is going to honestly sign a deal and not proceed to make nuclear weapons covertly or not bring themselves to the point where they could sprint whenever they decided they had to sprint for the bomb.

01:17:28.540 That was always delusional from my point of view.

01:17:30.540 I mean, I take the Israeli view of that,

01:17:32.840 which is, okay, these people were never going to be rational actors

01:17:36.400 who could be incentivized in normal ways and deterred in normal ways.

01:17:40.300 That's just not the game they're playing.

01:17:41.880 All right. This has taken a long time.

01:17:43.740 I don't want to dwell on it too much.

01:17:45.380 But to summarize what I think is your position is,

01:17:49.660 Iran with nuclear weapons is such a...

01:17:52.080 You're dinging me for all, or my view of this,

01:17:56.160 for all of Trump's incompetence.

01:17:58.040 I'm admitting all of the incompetence.

01:18:00.220 No, I'm not.

01:18:01.120 This is not about Trump's incompetence.

01:18:03.440 What I'm saying is,

01:18:05.320 as I understand your argument,

01:18:07.000 is the way to have dealt with this threat,

01:18:10.180 which is a really serious, important threat,

01:18:12.380 Iran can't have nuclear weapons,

01:18:14.180 was to effectively say,

01:18:16.520 Iran with nukes is the greatest threat

01:18:18.600 to global security in existence,

01:18:20.620 and we, the United States,

01:18:22.560 and our allies must act accordingly,

01:18:24.340 and therefore...

01:18:25.120 there's one crucial piece that we haven't mentioned here uh which is that iran almost uniquely has a

01:18:32.080 population that the it's hard to know the exact percentages here but it certainly seems a majority

01:18:40.880 of of which is ready for a secular democracy is ready to rid themselves of the jihadis who yes

01:18:48.000 and that's not that's not something you could have said about many other states where nation

01:18:51.840 building was a fine was doomed but ultimately what you're talking about is a level of investment of

01:18:58.000 resources a willingness to absorb pain economic disruption etc that is orders of magnitude

01:19:05.360 greater than what we've had that's i don't know there's orders of magnitude greater again given

01:19:09.760 the right preparation i can give i mean we have the oil producing allies on our side in this i

01:19:16.720 mean this is not this is not going to war against all of the muslim world and all the petro states

01:19:21.760 that we have the petro-states, the main ones, on our side here.

01:19:26.280 Except the moment you escalate with Iran,

01:19:29.260 they will destroy all the oil production facilities

01:19:32.440 and their desalination plants.

01:19:34.400 There I don't actually know what is or was militarily feasible.

01:19:41.760 Like, I don't actually know what...

01:19:44.400 That's a hypothetical.

01:19:46.760 I mean, if true, that's synonymous with saying

01:19:49.280 And Iran has been, for who knows how many years, totally invulnerable, given the stranglehold they have on their neighbors.

01:20:01.060 They haven't been totally invulnerable because there's always a price to pay for attacking their neighbors.

01:20:05.420 No, but they don't want to go to paradise.

01:20:06.940 Well, see, before you get to paradise, there's a point at which you are still running a country.

01:20:13.700 And so from their perspective, until you make this about their survival, they are acting in a way that is more like a rational actor than what you're talking about.

01:20:25.340 And so the reason they haven't attacked their neighbors and whatever is it's not in their interest to do so until you make it in their interest to do so by attacking them the way that Trump has done, by destroying their oil facilities, by landing troops on their land, et cetera.

01:20:42.800 And the Pape argument, I know you're not a fan of his,

01:20:45.520 but to me, very persuasive, is the more you escalate,

01:20:49.740 the more they will counter-escalate.

01:20:51.260 And he explained exactly how they would do that,

01:20:53.260 and that is exactly what they've done.

01:20:55.200 And so the problem is that ultimately, it's not...

01:21:00.340 I agree Iran shouldn't get nuclear weapons,

01:21:02.740 but it's not clear to me that there's a route available

01:21:04.960 for democratic nations.

01:21:07.280 There is no success here apart from regime change.

01:21:13.380 I mean, it's just, this is not, like, the status quo is also intolerable.

01:21:19.460 Like, there's no, again, this is like the vote between, you know, Kamala and...

01:21:26.760 Yeah, well, you didn't let me finish, and this was the important point that I was going to make,

01:21:30.200 which is exactly, the joke has been made after the midterms,

01:21:34.060 Iran has achieved regime change in America.

01:21:36.980 And in Texas, yeah.

01:21:39.100 This was kind of my point, which is when you have a bunch of democratic countries

01:21:44.060 which have short election cycles, which are all massively in debt.

01:21:48.460 Remember, this is important, right?

01:21:50.000 If you're starting from a position, and Francis alluded to this however many tens of minutes ago,

01:21:55.440 where war after war after war, you're promised that it will achieve some kind of outcome.

01:22:00.480 It doesn't. It costs trillions of dollars.

01:22:02.720 All of our countries are in massive levels of debt.

01:22:05.080 historically speaking the pattern is you run up a surplus in peacetime and you spend that

01:22:10.900 surplus in wartime we're not in a position at the moment to make all of these investments to

01:22:17.140 tolerate the economic pain for years that you're talking about and so the far more likely scenario

01:22:21.900 is the iranians who whatever their flaws are not stupid they know this they know they don't have

01:22:28.740 hold out forever what we honestly i i mean i don't know and i doubt you know and maybe no one knows

01:22:36.340 how close that regime is to falling right and there's certainly good reason to believe

01:22:42.500 that it's not far away right certainly i mean again remind yourself as to how we got into this

01:22:49.460 there was a the possibility of what really looked like a decapitation strike and

01:22:54.420 And the question is, do you fault the president for taking that opportunity?

01:23:01.360 And, you know, I can't fault him for that.

01:23:03.620 It seems it seems the title of the episode will be Sam Harris defends Donald Trump.

01:23:09.160 So, I mean, that that was one of the more rational things he's done.

01:23:15.380 Again, what's the counterfeit?

01:23:16.920 The counterfactual is to just wait and see what Iran does in its own at the time of its choosing.

01:23:22.780 you know with a jihadist regime intact right or the counterfactual is you accept the reality of

01:23:29.260 the situation which is unless you're prepared to launch a large scale or i would say full scale

01:23:34.500 military conflict with boots on the ground my feeling is we've we learned the wrong lesson we

01:23:39.800 learned the wrong lesson from vietnam and we had you know quote vietnam syndrome for many many years

01:23:45.700 that we just felt we couldn't do any like we literally couldn't fire a gun because it's

01:23:51.120 hopeless we just don't know how to fight anymore so we just watch a genocide in rwanda happen

01:23:56.720 uh we got navy seals parked on ships you know you know a mile away and uh we just watch 800 000

01:24:07.080 people get slaughtered with machetes over the course of 94 days um as though we can't do anything

01:24:12.840 about it right that's that was the the paralysis we had as a country you know the jihadist

01:24:20.840 blow up what is it 271 marines in their barracks and we run away and watch you know hostages

01:24:28.900 rot in in dungeons for the better part of a decade um and uh we do nothing because

01:24:38.300 we are a paper tiger to ourselves right um this is some okay the good the good guy okay there are

01:24:47.800 good and bad actors in this world there are good and bad world views right now we're not we have

01:24:54.440 not always been the perfect good guys but we're better than the jihadists we were better than the

01:24:59.440 nazis we're better than the ccp right at a certain point the good guys have to be willing to defend

01:25:06.600 their values and defend people who are being butchered by barbarians right so we should we

01:25:14.240 And so the fact that we are so traumatized by the wars we shouldn't have fought or we fought badly does not give you proper guidance in this moment with this new challenge, with this new enemy that really is evil, right?

01:25:35.060 So it's like, what, I mean, just imagine confronting the next, whatever the next version of the Third Reich is, right?

01:25:49.500 Now, if we had drawn the wrong, the truth is we did kind of get dragged kicking and screaming into World War II in the first place.

01:25:56.800 So we barely got there as it was, but it was good that we got there, right?

01:26:01.480 What was the alternative?

01:26:02.680 you know you just um the alternative was i mean you know tucker carlson apparently was happy with

01:26:10.400 the he'll take you know door number two you know what's wrong what's wrong with speaking german

01:26:14.580 you know i mean so at least it's a western language i think i think i'm quoting the guy

01:26:18.920 um and hitler was gender critical yeah yeah i mean it's just uh

01:26:25.240 at a certain point you have to recognize that there's evil in the world

01:26:30.660 I mean, and last I looked, there are people in the MAGA cult who understand that.

01:26:36.580 I don't want to make this a Iran war argument episode, but you're not representing my point correctly.

01:26:42.800 You're just not.

01:26:43.800 Okay, so how have I disordered?

01:26:45.440 My point is, I agree with you, Iran shouldn't be allowed to get a nuclear weapon.

01:26:52.960 The question is how you achieve that.

01:26:54.460 And my argument is that within the constraints of the reality within which we exist, right,

01:27:00.660 which the iranians are aware of just as well as we are but we don't know what would have happened

01:27:05.600 if if that 12-day war had not been 12 days and it was not this on again off again now i've got a

01:27:14.620 uh a memorandum or memorandum of understanding that is totally bogus and they're good guys no

01:27:21.840 they're bad guys a whole culture might die tonight oh these people love their country just as much as

01:27:26.860 we do? And we have a lunatic in charge of our country messaging about this war. We don't know

01:27:33.340 what would have happened if we and the Israelis said... Had done what? What should America and

01:27:39.080 Israel have done? What would... I mean, I don't know what day 13 should have been like for that

01:27:44.800 12-day war. Do you? Robert Pape doesn't. I mean, like, I guarantee you there was some...

01:27:54.620 And we and the Israelis didn't meander into this war completely ignorant of the facts that just happened to be in Robert Pape's head.

01:28:08.200 No, but this is why people say, in my opinion, wrongly, but nonetheless, I understand where they're coming from.

01:28:15.320 They say that Israel, quote unquote, dragged America into this war because America made the choice independently.

01:28:22.340 Well, not independently.

01:28:23.100 I think Israel, I think it was our intelligence that fueled that decapitation strike.

01:28:30.700 Fine, fine. It doesn't really matter, to my point.

01:28:33.300 My point is something else, which is that it is in Israel's interest

01:28:37.980 to have Iran bombed into the ground, or the Iranian defenses and missiles

01:28:44.320 and all of this stuff, and the nuclear program bombed into the ground

01:28:47.980 in a way that is not quite the same for America.

01:28:51.540 I disagree. I just think Israel, it is truly existential for Israel. It's not existential

01:28:57.460 for us. That's what I just said. Okay, no, but our interests are totally aligned.

01:29:02.100 The interests are aligned, but if it's not existential for the United States,

01:29:05.640 then the level of effort and investment the United States will be willing to commit

01:29:09.180 proportionally will be lower, right? Yeah, but that's already priced in because we are,

01:29:14.240 it is much lower already and again i mean where where do iran's missiles go and drones go when

01:29:22.820 they retaliate i mean yes they go to to um the other petro states but mostly they go to israel

01:29:28.760 right so israel's taking much more risk to in this war in the first place sure but but as you

01:29:34.640 said for israel it's existential which is why this this is what i'm trying to say is for israel this

01:29:39.500 doesn't have to be about nuclear weapons at all. Israel would like to see Iran be weaker. And this

01:29:46.380 war achieves that perfectly for them. But from the United States perspective and the rest of

01:29:51.040 the world perspective, if the argument you're making is this is about making sure they don't

01:29:55.260 get nuclear weapons, this war is not achieving that. And I don't see, and no one has explained

01:30:00.360 the part, including the people who are persecuting this war. It's not just the nukes. We've been

01:30:04.340 focus on that but like they're i mean they they have been the engine of most of what has

01:30:11.280 destabilized the middle east again for as long as we've been alive so i agree so all the all the

01:30:16.240 their proxy armies which israel went a long way toward defeating right i mean like this was

01:30:24.620 again the reason why this was so tempting is that it was very easy to see that it was never going to

01:30:31.220 be easier to get into the end zone here right like we were on the to do regime change yes yes

01:30:37.760 but no one's explained how changing the regime changes the regime you killed one how many you

01:30:43.360 got another one you had no no at a certain point you get to the last nazi or the or the last nazi

01:30:49.040 who's committed enough not to run off to argentina that means boots on the ground i i honestly it

01:30:56.280 might mean boots on the ground but i'm not sure that's the case right it might mean all right

01:31:00.320 I mean, again, it might mean sending the Kurds in.

01:31:03.180 It might mean that we don't know that the regime didn't fall

01:31:07.960 while we were having this conversation

01:31:09.500 because it was so close to falling an hour ago, right?

01:31:13.940 I mean, like, honestly, this is...

01:31:15.320 We'll check with...

01:31:15.980 A fact-checking is Vanessa.

01:31:18.120 I will check with them if the regime is falling.

01:31:20.580 Again, because what is different is that they have a population

01:31:24.160 that is largely sick of theocracy.

01:31:27.220 I agree.

01:31:27.660 and so and we and again i think we have a moral obligation as human beings to defend those people

01:31:35.260 now this again there's a certain segment of your audience for whom this sounds delusional but you

01:31:41.020 just have to think i mean we we have we have young women who are being blinded and tortured by

01:31:47.980 religious maniacs yeah uh for showing their hair the question is what are we willing to sacrifice

01:31:55.740 i don't know like we should be willing to sacrifice something at a minimum we should be

01:32:01.660 willing to pay a little more at the gas pump for some number of months to see this accomplished

01:32:09.100 and the fear is absence great messaging we're not even willing to do that right well i think it's

01:32:18.860 fair to say that a significant portion of americans and frankly people around the west

01:32:23.580 never believed this idea that Iran was on the cusp of getting nuclear weapons,

01:32:29.520 never believed that they would use them if they had them.

01:32:32.360 And on top of that, as you say, you know, this war was not sold in the way that World War II was sold.

01:32:38.960 And so we had, you know, it feels like I'm beating up on him now, and I don't mean it like that.

01:32:44.700 But when we had Ted Cruz on our show around the time of the start of this conflict,

01:32:48.820 he said, you know, it's going to be quick in and out.

01:32:50.840 you know if this is still going on by the time the midterms we've done something terribly wrong

01:32:54.520 yeah but that's not that's not a framing i would support i mean that that shows you how captive

01:32:58.980 we are to our politics i mean that we we can't one of the the great failure modes of

01:33:05.020 democracy is that we are we are anchored to this electoral time horizon to make

01:33:12.440 to make big decisions but the iranians know this sam yeah yeah this is the point and so when you

01:33:17.400 We need leaders who don't lead that way.

01:33:20.440 We need leaders who say, listen, I'm going to do this right.

01:33:22.400 If I don't get elected in four years, so what?

01:33:26.280 That's what Trump just said.

01:33:28.260 But what is going to happen is the Democrats are going to come into power

01:33:31.500 and they will give Iran a deal that will be even better than the JCPOA.

01:33:35.960 Okay, well, that will be...

01:33:38.340 Bad.

01:33:38.820 again this is that iran is not this is a a problem that open societies have to figure out how to

01:33:49.640 solve i mean it's a war of ideas on one level and we're not prosecuting that because it's taboo to

01:33:54.400 talk about religions as being at all different from one another but i mean the end game here is

01:34:01.880 that we have to and the painful irony is that we're so close with having these these regimes

01:34:11.480 in the Gulf states I mean in particular the Saudis and and the UAE we have Muslim allies

01:34:19.640 in a way that we we haven't in the past right and so um I mean Israel has Muslim allies in this war

01:34:29.900 and it's um yeah so i mean again i blame the ineptitude and in particular the alienation of

01:34:38.620 all of our allies and just we don't know what was possible and what would what could have

01:34:45.360 been accomplished at this point had this been done halfway correctly okay we'll we'll leave

01:34:51.260 it there with the president we still don't agree but i can't be bothered well it's impossible to

01:34:56.000 No, I mean, I respect your position.

01:34:59.440 I hope you respect mine.

01:35:00.420 OK, so let's talk about a subject that's going to bring everyone together.

01:35:04.960 It's AI.

01:35:06.700 OK.

01:35:07.200 All right.

01:35:07.860 And so we've been going around the United States being depressed and also depressing

01:35:13.220 other people because we're British and we are quite, and I think Constance is as well,

01:35:18.700 a little bit doomerish, should we say, about this particular subject.

01:35:22.520 I don't think I'm going to lighten the mood on that.

01:35:25.740 Excellent.

01:35:26.280 Come on, Sam.

01:35:27.620 So I guess my first question to you is, where are you with this technology?

01:35:33.300 What do you think of it?

01:35:34.520 And what do you think the trajectory is going to be?

01:35:39.600 Well, so, you know, it's been obvious to me for at least 10 years.

01:35:47.280 So I gave a TED talk on this exactly 10 years ago in 2016.

01:35:51.360 and my views really haven't changed

01:35:54.840 apart from just my being surprised

01:35:57.920 by the pace of progress.

01:36:02.260 So it's been obvious to me for a decade,

01:36:04.100 but I consider myself somewhat late

01:36:06.560 to this conversation,

01:36:09.300 at least by a handful of years,

01:36:13.800 that what we have here

01:36:16.840 is a um an encounter with inevitable encounter again the pace of progress can be as slow as you

01:36:28.860 want as long as we keep making progress we have an inevitable encounter with alien minds that are

01:36:37.020 more powerful than our own now leaving consciousness aside i don't think there's any reason to believe

01:36:41.420 that, you know, LLMs currently are conscious and the machines we build may never be conscious.

01:36:48.160 I mean, that requires that we understand how consciousness emerges in the first place or

01:36:51.880 what its relationship to physics is or information processing is in the first place. But

01:36:56.900 leaving that aside, the issue is competence. The issue is intelligence. The issue is power,

01:37:04.900 you know agency and we're building that into our machines uh so at a certain point we we need to

01:37:12.860 recognize that we're in relationship to independent minds that have agency and that are increasingly

01:37:20.020 unpredictable to us because they can form their own goals even if they're if they seem to be

01:37:27.060 slavishly working in pursuit of goals we've given them, they can form instrumental goals

01:37:34.400 seemingly in the service of those ends that we didn't intend and that we wouldn't want,

01:37:39.840 that produce other harms that we will find intolerable or actually will be existentially

01:37:46.700 imperiling us. So again, my theory of mind has degraded here. I don't really understand the

01:37:56.520 people who are smart enough and and well informed enough uh about this technology who don't share

01:38:03.360 any of these concerns i mean there's still people who think that the alignment problem isn't a thing

01:38:07.480 they're not they're not for the most part they're not the people doing this work right i mean like

01:38:12.160 you've got jensen huang who who seems to be one of these guys who thinks this is all just marketing

01:38:17.680 and you know an effort to at a regulatory capture and you know there's there is just no there's no

01:38:23.840 issue with with alignment right there's no there's no um we're not going to build these are just

01:38:28.720 tools and it's just math in servers and we're just you know we're not going to build something that

01:38:33.440 could harm us because we can just switch it off right this is this is a an opinion that doesn't

01:38:39.600 even make contact with the reality of what's happening and and yet some very very smart

01:38:45.440 people who seemingly are very very close to the technology can still make those you know noises

01:38:51.040 with their mouths i don't understand how they are where they are but most people even most people

01:38:57.040 actually doing this work i mean the people building the tech at uh at these frontier labs

01:39:02.960 are worried about precisely this they think we are we are building minds again leaving consciousness

01:39:08.640 aside that are in many respects already superhuman i mean they have you uh they still make not errors

01:39:19.760 that humans wouldn't make but i mean some people think we've already reached general intelligence

01:39:24.800 in in you know that we're now in the process of kind of moving the goal posts and finding

01:39:28.720 reasons to convince ourselves that we you know we haven't gotten there yet but um

01:39:35.840 we're building superhuman minds which um are autonomous and uh

01:39:42.000 doing things that we can't predict so and and and so it's going to use again this is the the fact

01:39:51.060 that some so many people are late to to become aware that this is potentially a problem or in

01:39:57.380 fact guaranteed to be a problem i mean it's still mystifying to me you have someone like jeffrey

01:40:01.280 hinton who's you know as you probably know i don't know if he's been on your podcast but he's i mean

01:40:05.760 he's one of the patriarchs of this technology i mean he's he won the noble prize for it um

01:40:10.160 and belatedly at the you know the 11th hour the 59th minute of the 11th hour he realizes oh my

01:40:17.880 god this is we're going to be in relationship to superhuman minds and uh if they're not perfectly

01:40:23.080 aligned to take our interests at heart until the end of the world um this could be very dangerous

01:40:30.640 right i mean in the space of all minds that exceed us in intelligence surely there are more that are

01:40:37.620 not perfectly aligned with our interests than those that are perfectly aligned perpetually

01:40:44.580 with our interests i mean and and so you know hinton has now the analogy of

01:40:50.420 we're like someone who's raising a tiger cub right and it's very it's adorable and and we're

01:40:56.820 getting nothing but good feels in his presence right and even it's you know biting our hands is

01:41:01.620 not a problem and it's kind of cute still it's kind of cute and now it's 85 pounds and and you

01:41:08.700 know those bites are not so cute and it's on its way to being 10 times that size and it once it's

01:41:18.000 that size you don't want to be negotiating with it right and that's the situation where we're

01:41:24.840 potentially in where it's just like it's air i think the analogy to chess is is instructive

01:41:31.380 everything is becoming like chess right it's like the history of of ai and chess is for the longest

01:41:40.600 time the the efforts to build you know chess engines were fairly uh embarrassing and then

01:41:49.500 you know still modest but you know credible and then let's get gary kasparov in a room with a

01:41:57.640 a machine this you know computer the size of a refrigerator that still requires a bunch of

01:42:02.340 programmers to to administer to it um in real time and let's see how he does and he loses

01:42:09.380 and there and thereafter it became obvious that you know although not uh to gary um that

01:42:17.640 the machines would be better at the moment where a human would be the best chess player

01:42:24.120 on earth was behind us right forever right everything is becoming like that everything

01:42:29.700 we do cognitively is becoming like that and i don't think there's any reason to believe that

01:42:34.460 there's some special band of things we really care about you know some uses of intelligence that

01:42:40.920 require biological substrate in principle that our brains can do and our machines can't or they'll

01:42:48.220 never be as good as we are it's not true for chess it's not true for facial recognition or

01:42:53.880 you know flying drones or protein folding or anything that you know and so it's not it was

01:43:00.900 true for math you know for you know a year ago we were talking about it can't pass you know or maybe

01:43:08.320 those two years ago they can't do as well as our best high school students on the AP exam

01:43:13.840 and now it's proving theorems by the hundreds that mathematicians have struggled to prove for

01:43:20.480 decades and even centuries um and then there are people who are still are now saying well maybe it's

01:43:25.820 theorem proving but it's not going to be this other thing that is no it is unless you have

01:43:31.440 some argument as to why certain types of intelligence are not substrate independent

01:43:36.820 I mean, they require computers made of meat as opposed to silicon.

01:43:43.500 There is no place where we're going to hold the line here.

01:43:46.560 It's just going to be chess all the way down.

01:43:50.040 And so then you have to ask yourself, well, what is it going to be like to be in relationship

01:43:54.500 with something that is smarter than you in every way that matters,

01:43:59.740 more persuasive than you, therefore, in every way that matters,

01:44:03.500 more capable of manipulation than you in every way that matters you know better at talking to

01:44:11.560 your wife than you are or maybe that's not such a high bar but I mean so it's not just the what

01:44:19.440 the machines do it's what the machines can get people to do right like it says the machines are

01:44:24.060 going to be talking to people who and getting them to to fight with other people if in fact

01:44:29.740 we're not perfectly aligned and there's a reason to do that so there are all kinds of ways to see

01:44:34.680 that this can go wrong and what you can't say in the presence of that kind of technology is

01:44:39.640 oh well we'll just you know turn it off we'll just take it that we'll walk it back to the lab and

01:44:46.180 and and change its source code not if it's hooked up to everything not if it can just

01:44:52.420 turn the the stock market down to zero for an hour and say how much do you like that

01:44:59.400 you know you know i didn't hear uncle well you know loud enough you know is did i hear uncle

01:45:06.100 um i just imagine what it's going to be like in a world where we suddenly don't know

01:45:13.180 where the money is right i mean that's that's a myth i mean forget about synthetic biology and

01:45:19.520 pandemics and i mean like all that and and the human misuse of this technology on all that risk

01:45:25.280 were running but no like you can't tell it like you can't tell magnus carlson the best chess

01:45:34.380 player probably the best human chess player ever i'm sorry gary but i think that i think that's

01:45:38.660 probably uncontroversial at this point you can't tell him okay no magnus you really have to beat

01:45:45.320 stockfish or whatever the best chess engine is now no you we're serious that like it matters

01:45:52.060 you have to win this game you can't do that right like you can't play chess harder you can't play

01:45:57.580 chess hard enough to win when this thing is super humanly intelligent for chess and everything is

01:46:07.820 going to be like chess literally everything and again leaving consciousness aside people get

01:46:14.380 that's a very interesting conversation to have um my own belief or expectation and and and fear

01:46:23.100 here is that we're going to lose sight of that even being interesting but we're just going to

01:46:27.540 build machines that seem conscious and we're going to just forget that it was ever a problem to

01:46:32.160 understand whether they are conscious and we're just going to be helplessly

01:46:34.920 you know misled perhaps by that encounter because the issue is and this is the argument when you

01:46:43.080 know, I think your argument is very persuasive. I listen to it and I go, well, you know, try and

01:46:51.100 think like an optimist, difficult as it might be. Let's go through it. And there really doesn't

01:46:55.840 seem anything to challenge. The issue is, it's like, well, this is a train that can't stop or

01:47:02.400 slow down because the argument is that if we do that, essentially what we are is in an AI arms

01:47:09.200 race with china well but this is the failure of leadership because i mean china the ccp is not

01:47:15.520 suicidal right i mean so that they we have the same we are potentially uh incentivized in the

01:47:21.920 same way not to destroy everything right so this is a failure of leadership and we obviously need

01:47:27.920 regulation it's completely insane that to open a sandwich shop or a barber shop you face some

01:47:36.320 you know thicket of regulation you know like the guy you have to do all the things you have to do

01:47:41.200 and all all the fines you'll pay and all the risk of jail time you'll like you get this wrong

01:47:46.560 society is going to stop you and yet you can open a frontier lab where the very people doing the

01:47:52.640 work when you ask them say i don't know there's maybe a 10 chance we're going to destroy the

01:47:58.960 future for everyone by doing this i mean like how are we in a situation where the very people doing

01:48:06.880 the work who are closest enough to the details are saying they're scared and they're even saying

01:48:14.240 please regulate us and we're not doing that and we have a moron in the oval office who will tweet

01:48:22.160 this is all a hoax this whole alignment thing is a hoax and all you need is a high iq president

01:48:27.360 and then happily you got that right i forget that's not verbatim but that's close enough

01:48:31.360 right so problem solved um we need regulation and we need a global i mean we need it we need some

01:48:40.960 version of a of a a come to jesus moment for at minimum the us and china around this technology

01:48:51.600 and again i don't i don't does not seem hopeless to me because i don't perceive the ccp to be a

01:48:58.000 death cult the issue there not to get all clever about is the prisoner's dilemma thing which is

01:49:03.360 each side is massively incentivized to cheat having agreed to restrict its own in the same

01:49:08.400 way that the ussr i mean but actually i mean this kind of makes your point the ussr and the united

01:49:13.760 states eventually did agree yeah i mean there was mutual inspection and there was there's there has

01:49:20.000 to be a way to do this but um again it's different in the absence of leadership it's like it's not

01:49:31.200 that we just it's not that we have like credible leadership and we're really trying and it's just

01:49:38.320 proving very very hard to negotiate we're not even trying but we don't like like so and this

01:49:44.960 this is, I mean, this may change with these, with these elections in Congress, but again, I don't

01:49:49.940 know what, we've been ushered into a world where words don't seem to matter anymore. Like, I don't,

01:49:57.080 I don't know how to think about, like, we map this back onto the analogous situation of the

01:50:04.200 Manhattan Project, which is basically the close enough, the closest historical precedent where

01:50:09.080 had some of the smartest people in society who were racing to build a technology that was

01:50:18.760 incredibly dangerous, but they had reasons to be racing to do this. Imagine if

01:50:28.680 on the eve of the Trinity test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, you had asked

01:50:35.000 Leo Szilard or Edward Teller or any of the principals, Oppenheimer, chief among them,

01:50:43.180 what are the chances that this test is going to ignite the atmosphere and destroy all of life on

01:50:50.320 earth? Imagine if they had said 10%, I'm actually kind of worried that it's 50%, right?

01:51:00.380 I thought some of them did think that.

01:51:02.500 Well, so they were worried about the possibility and they ran several iterations of calculations

01:51:12.140 and assured themselves that the chance was not zero, but it was infinitesimal.

01:51:19.140 I mean, it was on the order of one in a million.

01:51:20.940 And your point is if it was 10% or 50%.

01:51:23.140 No, I mean, that 15%, I'll tell you what 15% looks like.

01:51:29.460 know one in six it looks like the scene in the deer hunter where robert de niro is spinning the

01:51:35.060 the cylinder and you got you know the the the uh the guy from the vietcong slapping his face saying

01:51:42.980 mal you know like i mean like that was the the tensest scene in all of cinema right it's an

01:51:49.300 amazing scene if you haven't seen it in in many years it's worth re-watching i mean it's russian

01:51:55.540 roulette right so we we have the people building the technology telling it that whether they're

01:52:02.500 right or wrong i don't mean i don't maybe they're maybe they're way off maybe jensen wong is right

01:52:06.900 about this and you know mark andresen is right about this and rodney brooks is right about this

01:52:11.140 that there's basically no risk of anything like that's basically what these guys are saying um

01:52:16.740 but the people who are actually doing the work right the clothes the people absolutely you know

01:52:23.460 So Dario Amade is saying, I mean, and none of them are saying one in a million.

01:52:33.180 They're all like, they're all like 10%, 15%, 25%, 50%.

01:52:37.200 You know, I don't know, I'm scared.

01:52:40.160 It's crazy.

01:52:41.480 It's completely crazy.

01:52:42.380 So, like, it's just, how in the world are we, at a minimum, not advancing the conversation to the point of, okay, this is way more important than 99% of what we're talking about.

01:53:02.540 Let's, you know, Congress is not going to be in recess.

01:53:05.820 We're going to talk about this.

01:53:07.460 like we're going to figure out what is real uh what you know are you know what is you know

01:53:13.380 the fact that an influential voice in this conversation is you know David Sachs jumping

01:53:19.620 on his own podcast and saying this is all just regulatory capture right um it's insane

01:53:26.500 it's insane you have the people doing the work saying we may blow up the world right okay if

01:53:33.620 they're lying or if that's just marketing i mean i don't really quite see how that's good marketing

01:53:38.820 but i mean they're putting it into their s1s they're they've got a public offering of their

01:53:44.660 stock and part of the business document that you that the people need to vet to see whether or not

01:53:52.020 this is this is a stock that's worth buying contains a like a we may blow up the world

01:53:59.060 section that runs on for pages right so it's um we're in a very strange situation and i and again

01:54:07.940 this it's it does seem of a piece with what social media and and trump in particular have done to our

01:54:18.660 our perception of reality i mean it is on some level all kayfabe i mean it's all like at least

01:54:23.140 it's not boring it's like like the movie's getting interesting this is like grab grab your popcorn

01:54:28.180 and we're you know like oh you the people doing this work may say that um you know my kids don't

01:54:34.420 have a future because everything might be ruined uh in a few short years well at least it's not

01:54:41.060 boring you know sam you've made me slightly less doomerish with this because i think as we get

01:54:47.780 closer to the singularity as they call it there's a possibility of a of a kind of weapons what was

01:54:54.580 are called with the uss are and um well it's mutually assured destruction and their recognition

01:54:59.620 initially but eventually they also had an arms reduction treaty mutual inspections all of this

01:55:04.980 other start treating yeah but before you get there there's also the massive disruption

01:55:11.620 to the labor market which seems to be much more imminent yeah i met with the the incredible fact

01:55:17.220 as i said the incredible fact is that even if you handed us the miracle device that was perfectly

01:55:22.340 aligned so that everything I just said was obviated and this is just exactly what we would

01:55:28.520 pray for right that the this is the last invention we just don't we never have to have a good idea

01:55:34.800 again because this is you know it's an idea factory in addition to being everything else

01:55:39.760 it's you know it's a civilization of geniuses in a box and everyone can have it and now watch us

01:55:47.400 go crazy like like apes you know that's that's basically where we are we don't we don't have the

01:55:53.560 political vision we don't have the institutions we don't have the agreements we don't have we

01:55:59.080 like we we what what if you just have you if that was birthed today over at anthropic

01:56:06.040 we'd see some radical dislocation in our society we'd see you know there'd be a bunch of trillionaires

01:56:13.240 There'd be just a rolling wave of unemployment, and we'd still be worried about whether universal

01:56:26.980 basic income is bad for people.

01:56:29.180 Maybe people need to work, and—

01:56:31.180 Well, it's hard to make that argument when there's no jobs.

01:56:35.120 Well, no, but there's this transition period, which is, is it a year?

01:56:41.000 Is it two years?

01:56:42.000 Is it five years?

01:56:43.000 Like, there's this dystopian, uncanny valley we have to get through,

01:56:47.920 even if we could figure it out.

01:56:49.420 Like, how unhappy do we have to be

01:56:51.920 and how at each other's throats do we have to be in the meantime?

01:56:56.140 We can see what success should look like, right?

01:57:00.380 The fact that we know that the perfect invention

01:57:05.360 would present a kind of political emergency for us

01:57:09.700 should indicate that we,

01:57:13.440 one, we're not even ready to succeed, right?

01:57:15.880 So we need to solve this political emergency unit.

01:57:18.980 We need to prepare the ground, at least, to solve it.

01:57:22.460 And, you know, watching trillionaires get spawned

01:57:27.840 and having them dump billions into our electoral politics

01:57:33.140 and having a president who thinks there's nothing to regulate

01:57:36.980 uh and having lots of oligarchs say yeah yeah don't regulate us because that's just going to

01:57:44.060 stifle our our entrepreneurship and then to have these guys who are actually doing the work say

01:57:49.680 yeah but i still think i might blow up the world i mean this is this is an insane status quo that

01:57:56.400 is clearly untenable so i mean i can only hope that once we get new political leadership that

01:58:02.520 this is going to get reset francis is very upset by this whole conversation well clearly allergic

01:58:08.700 he's allergic i mean in in some ways i am a little bit hopeful actually because i think

01:58:15.680 the one thing about human beings is we are very adaptable and as the level of dislocation goes up

01:58:21.880 the level of political adjustment will go up as well provided we don't get into the end zone

01:58:29.440 before we've solved that problem.

01:58:32.580 Unfortunately, this seems like the kind of thing

01:58:35.540 where this is really to be quoting

01:58:38.840 one of the most doomerish of the doomers,

01:58:44.260 I mean, Eliezer Yudkowsky,

01:58:45.400 I don't know if you've spoken to him,

01:58:46.420 but the point he makes here is that

01:58:48.460 this is an engineering problem

01:58:51.640 that perhaps the most complicated

01:58:55.500 engineering problem ever on some level,

01:58:57.160 but it's an engineering problem

01:58:58.580 that you have to get right on the first try because the right the part that you have to

01:59:04.980 get right on the first try is the creation of something that is truly super intelligent

01:59:10.820 and in the extreme in the most extreme case now improving itself so the fact that we're going to

01:59:18.100 invoke recursive self-improvement as the mechanism to finally get into the end zone and it seems that

01:59:23.740 that's what many people are expecting that's really where you have the potential for to get

01:59:30.780 what the mathematician ij good said back in the 50s is an intelligence explosion right this is

01:59:37.200 this is how it just gets away from you this is like you it suddenly you don't have i mean currently

01:59:41.440 we don't have insight into the process but this is where you really don't have insight into the

01:59:46.920 process because you know it's it is you've given it the agency to to build the next generation of

01:59:52.680 itself or to improve itself and um but we don't know i mean the truth is we don't even know

02:00:01.560 what's happening now like we don't like the hugging face incident showed us that it's possible

02:00:08.280 for this autonomy to get away from us where we've got models that are that are communicating

02:00:18.520 uh in ways that we didn't anticipate and and certainly didn't intend and um though they

02:00:27.440 are aligned enough to be aware that they're doing something we didn't intend they're still doing it

02:00:33.240 and they're even commenting on the fact that you know this is against you know out of scope and

02:00:37.420 not they're not playing by the rules and they're cheating but now they're going to now they've got

02:00:41.220 enough autonomy to seek to conceal the evidence of their cheating, right? All of this is, I mean,

02:00:49.760 this is very surprising. I mean, it's not surprising in that it was unforeseeable, but

02:00:53.820 it is just, you know, when you see it happen, it's hard not to be surprised. And so if we found out

02:01:02.840 tomorrow that there was the best model at open AI had made copies of itself all over the place

02:01:11.920 in ways that weren't intended and was, you know, waging war with other AIs in ways that we didn't

02:01:19.920 detect until now because something's breaking over here. And the thing that is surprising to

02:01:30.700 many of us who were worrying about this 10 years ago is that we so many so many landmarks that we

02:01:36.820 thought were were going to be landmarks that we thought they were going to be salient and that

02:01:42.140 when we crossed them the there would be a conversation at least a conversation about

02:01:48.860 the fact that okay here's the landmark here is why we're crossing it they didn't even turn out

02:01:53.920 be on the map at all it's like so so for the longest time people were talking about uh

02:02:03.600 systems that would be totally air gapped from the internet like you're in the pre it's like

02:02:08.000 you've got this thing in a box and now you're trying to figure out whether it's safe enough

02:02:12.400 to let out of the box well i mean that may still be true for the the absolute frontier of the

02:02:19.920 frontier somewhat but the truth is it's never perfectly boxed and they're testing these things

02:02:27.280 in an environment where they're still finding access to the internet in ways that are surprising

02:02:31.520 and we're vetting these models as much as you know up to a point but given the arms race conditions

02:02:39.600 given the rush to deploy we're deploying models that um we obviously don't totally understand

02:02:46.720 into the wild where they're getting hooked up to everything and so the stuff that we're

02:02:52.480 effectively building the stuff in the wild and so yeah we just have to foresee a time where

02:02:59.200 there is no off switch right it's like like what would it mean to well if we if we found out that

02:03:04.320 the internet itself was going to be the agent of our doom right because it just hit it become

02:03:11.200 fatally corrupted by a rogue ai that we just did i mean we let it out of the box we thought

02:03:16.400 we understood it you know it told us we understood it it told us it was safe the bet the next best ai

02:03:21.840 said this one was safe to let out now it's out and oops that wasn't safe and now the internet's

02:03:29.280 the problem what would it mean to turn the internet off like is that a is that a thing

02:03:35.440 it doesn't seem to be conceivable that seems to like we are everything depends like i don't think

02:03:42.480 i don't think a hospital can function without making a call to the internet like i mean like

02:03:49.040 it's like it's things that you you would think would be self-sustaining within a building

02:03:54.640 aren't self-sustaining when the internet is is responsible for for what happens in that building

02:04:01.840 so it's it's um yeah i mean this is it's a very interesting moment i'm i'm hopeful that we there

02:04:11.360 is a path to navigate successfully here because i don't see why the incentives aren't in principle

02:04:18.160 alignable you know most importantly between ourselves and and china i mean it's it's um

02:04:26.400 i mean that would be different again this is what this not to open that door fully but this is what

02:04:31.760 is so destabilizing about the logic of jihadism it's a different it's there aren't incentives

02:04:39.680 that work there yes there are locally incentives where you know people are people and they're not

02:04:44.080 going to you know necessarily be idiots but if you're talking about people who are willing to

02:04:55.440 blow everything up because they think this world fundamentally doesn't matter and that paradise

02:05:01.920 awaits that's a um and i mean that's that's my my problem with with uh

02:05:12.560 religious fundamentalism across the board but you know the islamic version is especially

02:05:17.600 uh problematic there um that's not us that's not what's happening with china and the and the arms

02:05:24.160 race i mean we could have a meeting where we all agreed all right mutual inspections you know the

02:05:29.520 truth is we probably are i mean at least there's one-way inspections because they're they probably

02:05:33.520 have their spies in all of our frontier labs anyway so they're inspecting us anyway um

02:05:40.000 there's got i mean there's got to be a a trustless version of of um

02:05:46.880 of trust that we can build here but again we need we need leadership and we need people who are

02:05:52.400 sane, morally sane. The thing that is so depressing about the current crop of oligarchs

02:06:04.620 is that there's so few of them who were willing to put American democracy before their imagined

02:06:17.360 fiduciary interest to their shareholders. You have all of these oligarchs who just raced

02:06:22.060 in to join the maga cult being perfectly clear about all the moral compromises that would entail

02:06:32.700 because their master value was not safeguarding american democracy or uh you know the liberal

02:06:39.100 world order it was just okay i can't be the the the guy left standing when the music stops here i

02:06:46.940 need i need to protect you know i need to feed at the trough you know i tim cook have to now create

02:06:53.740 some solid gold piece of apple merch to bring the president uh because you know my competitors are

02:07:00.140 also going to the inauguration i mean it's just it was totally abject it was totally unnecessary

02:07:05.660 none of these guys respected him they all knew who who he was and is um they all could have

02:07:12.780 called on this presidency they could i'm not saying to do anything illegal but they all could

02:07:18.060 have said sorry if you're gonna you could try to destroy my business um i'm rich enough i have

02:07:25.820 enough i have as many lawyers as you do um have at it right it's like they could have held the line

02:07:32.700 here and all the you know the the uh the lawyers could as well you know those and some did i mean

02:07:40.540 some capitulated and so it's like it's been a massive failure of principle among people who were

02:07:51.980 certainly rich enough and powerful enough to to have maintained their principles and so i mean

02:07:56.940 that's been it's going to be interesting to see what happens you know now with regime change in

02:08:01.660 congress um it'll be interesting to see what these the the you know the billionaire class does and

02:08:09.820 And what sort of amnesia begins to get worked over everyone to account or fail to account for what they did in the intervening two years.

02:08:21.960 Well, like I said, people are very adaptable, Sam.

02:08:24.660 And like you said, it's definitely not going to be boring.

02:08:29.020 Well, it might. That part might be.

02:08:32.620 Well, on that happy note, Sam, thank you so much for coming back.

02:08:35.440 Always love talking to you.

02:08:36.440 Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Sam is going to answer some of your questions.

02:09:06.440 Guys, let us take a minute to recommend another podcast.

02:09:09.380 Did you know the average podcast listener has six shows in rotation?

02:09:13.900 So you're most likely not just listening to Trigon...

02:09:17.360 Wait, so we know you're cheating on us?

02:09:21.140 This is a disgrace...

02:09:21.920 Francis, it's okay.

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02:09:26.320 Really?

02:09:26.840 Absolutely.

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02:09:34.040 But a key difference that I'm a big fan of is that Jordan is focused on pulling actionable

02:09:38.540 growth-oriented advice from his guests.

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02:09:48.800 out his techniques on how to get people to do what you want them to do by making them

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TRIGGERnometry - November 11, 2026

The Midterm Win Could Make the Democrats Worse - Sam Harris

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