Andrew Bustamante, Annie Jacobsen, Benjamin Radd: WW3 Threat Assessment: "Trump Bombing Iran Just Increased Nuclear War Threat" The Terrifying Reality

00:00What does the United States think it's going to gain from decapitating the Iranian leadership? Well, that's kind of obvious based on what the president has said. It's that he needs to eat. On what the president has said? I'm just saying based on what the president says. You can't trust anything that you're hearing right now. You can't trust anything that you're reading right now. Okay, two to multiple. Well, that's, I mean, that's partly right. It's not paranoid.

00:17That is absolutely, it is absolutely paranoid to suggest that everything is misinformation. Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, so it's not a nuclear threat. You speak a different nuclear language than I do. This regime is at its lowest, lowest point. Why not strike it now? I mean, I can give lots of reasons why you wouldn't strike it. But what are you concerned about and what are the unintended consequences that you're foreseeing? There is a domino effect that happens with every decision that the United States makes.

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01:30Thank you so, so, so much. Benjamin, Annie, Andrew. First and foremost, thank you for being here today. I have to start with the question that's been on my mind.

01:45As somebody that doesn't know a huge amount about geopolitics, which is what the hell is going on? And I say that because that's exactly what I mean. What is going on? And what context do I need to understand this sort of historical context of the actions we're seeing in Iran with this wall right now? Benjamin, I know you've got a personal connection to Iran because your family fled Iran, I believe. Yeah, I was two years old when we left in March of 1979.

02:13A few months after the Shah had left and just after Khomeini had arrived. What is the Shah and what is Khomeini? Yeah, sorry. The Shah, the former monarch of Iran, the path of the dynasty, which came into power in the 1930s, deposing a previous dynasty that had been around for a couple of hundred years. And his father brought in that dynasty and then it was eventually, he was deposed by the British and the Americans who felt he was getting too close to the Nazis during World War II, concerned about supply routes for the Nazis, oil and his son was installed on the throne at a very young age, I believe, 18 or 19.

02:48And he ruled Iran from that period, 1941, 1942, and that time all the way through 79, a great ally of the United States over time eventually. And it was deposed, was overthrown on a revolution. And by Khomeini who is a senior cleric who had been a thorn in the Shah's side since the 60s was exiled first to Turkey, then Iraq, then ultimately to France, right outside Paris actually. From there, he basically led the revolution that led to the Shah's removal, Austria in 79.

03:23And how was Iran different when the Shah was in power versus when Khomeini was in power? That depends on who you ask. It was a constitutional monarchy. The Shah had powers that exceeded beyond what we think a constitutional monarchy has today, like in Great Britain. He ruled with an iron fist when he needed to, he was an authoritarian, but he also was one that was rapidly modernizing Iranian society, wanted to make it more like the West, using Iran's immense oil resources and wealth to really accelerate development, building of social institutions, healthcare, literacy, modernization, all of those things. That was his focus, make you run more like the West.

03:59And in that sense, he succeeded, but it came at the expense oftentimes of civil liberties for many people. It came at the expense of freedom for those who wanted to essentially practice religion, Islam, Islam in their own way. The Shah was not hostile to religion, but he, his policies were inconsistent with where the traditional religious Iranians wanted to go. And it sort of created a schism in society. And you also had a wealth gap, an income disparity, immense wealth poured into the country, but it didn't trickle its way downward into the sort of the village in rural poor. And so there's a lot of frustration, a lot of disenchantment with his policies. And that led to sort of this populist backlash of wanting something that was more democratic, more accountable, more like the West, ironically. And that sort of was the beginning of where that cycle led.

04:50And so how did Hamani take power of Iran? He led a movement, a mass populist movement, not a religious one, but it meant to go across multiple socio-economic and political divides and unified the opposition under this idea of removing the monarchy, removing dependence on the West. He specifically said the United States was a large part to blame for Iran being in the state that it was for people not having the the things they needed to live, the freedoms, the liberties. He blamed the Shah's use of the secret police and torture methods on the United States and on Israel who he claimed, taught the secret police how to do these things. There's a complicated sort of history to that.

05:34And he basically promised them salvation from what he portrayed as a puppet tyrant of the United States. And the masses bought into this, both the left and the right. The right consisted of the black, the Islamists. So you had the red, which were sort of the Marxist socialist followers. You had the black and then you had sort of that middle in between and they all coalesced around this one charismatic religious figure, a very austere man, one who didn't really have a lot of luxuries himself, let a simple life but was consistent with his opposition to what he saw tyranny and despotism.

06:12And people bought into it. And the Americans didn't like this. The Americans didn't know what to make of it. And there was a failure. And I think Andrew can talk about this as well over a failure by the State Department and the CIA in the 70s to see where the threat was. They saw the threat coming from the Soviet Union. They were still afraid of Soviet encroachment in the Middle East, particularly through Iran. Their concerns were with the Marxists, the communist parties.

06:36They did not carefully look at the black. They didn't look at the Islamists. They didn't see them as a threat until it was too late. The Shah himself blocked or really didn't give the CIA full access to Iran. There was limited information that was coming out. He relied on his own intelligence, which fed him information he wanted to hear, which is that everything is going great. The country is doing well. The people love you. They're all happy until the discontent and the protests became, they reached a threshold and it was too late to do anything about it.

07:07The United States was kind of at their peak period of meddling in foreign governments at the time. Kind of in a strange way that we've come full circle of this idea of controlling an entire country by controlling the figurehead of the country. That's where we were in the late 70s at the kind of brink of the Cold War. Nobody knew that the Berlin law was going to fall. We were all concerned with the spread of communism. Nobody was paying attention to the Islamist threat.

07:32Nobody was paying attention to really any other kind of threat at all. It was very much the unfettered uncontrolled, unsupervised CIA running around with no oversight and with very deep pockets. I'm not changed at some point. That changed in 2001 when Al Qaeda successfully carried out the 9-11 attacks in New York and all of a sudden the threat that we had all been ignoring was on our doorstep and had grown so wealthy and had spread so vast across the world that Islamic extremism became almost overnight a household term. Now there's still a difference between Al Qaeda, Islamic Shia extremism and what is practiced in the Shia faith and with the outcomes that the Shia militants are trying to pursue in support of Iran. But it's hard to differentiate that in the United States where we don't understand the difference between Sunni and Shia.

08:27And what do you think this war is really about? Very interesting what you both said and I think what I would add to that which very much speaks to today is that the CIA in fact had many ups and downs over the decades from its creation right after World War II until this moment in time and then on 9-11. And so it's been like an accordion experience of power being taken away from the CIA and then being grabbed back because the CIA has always historically been the president's hidden hand. It has been the way in which the White House can execute executive power without having to follow the laws of war that the military does.

09:13So military is a code called Title 10 CIA is a code called Title 50 and while that may sound a bit wonkish it is important to understand because Title 50 essentially as Andrew can speak to gives the president authority under classified presidential directive to change any rule he wants that suits him for an operation at hand which gets us precisely to where we are today. So as far as I understand there was the Shah the sort of role leader who was in power he was overthrown in the late 1970s by Hermani Hermani galvanized people to believe in his way and he's been in power ever since. It gets complicated because homani with an O was the original leader of the revolution and was later replaced by homani and A. That was the supreme leader. And this speaks to the revolutionary nature of Iran which has been taking place since 1979 in the news today people hear the Iranian revolutionary guard. And it's so important to understand that word revolution because and you can speak to this better than any of us but Iran has been holding on to this idea that or rather the regime has that we are the revolutionary force against America.

10:38That is why the chant is always death to America. The wound of 1975 the wound of America meddling and having the Shah as its puppet is as inflamed or was as inflamed two days ago as it was the day after the revolution in 1979. I think that's probably important context we missed which is the US got involved in the Shah and how he governed Iran. It's a fascinating period in 1951 so basically under the Iranian constitution the Shah the king has the authority to select the prime minister with the consent of parliament the consent part is really nominal. And so Mossadek who is a senior member of parliament and also a member of the previous royal dynasty is distantly related this elderly statesman who the Shah out of sort of courtesy after having gone through a successive list of prime ministers says okay I'm going to appoint him prime minister. So he wasn't democratically elected. He was elected to parliament but from there the Shah selected him to be prime minister.

11:43Mossadek nationalized the oil company the Anglo-American oil company which was owned primarily by the British this angered the British who in turn blockaded Iran's ports and basically shut down its oil industry and creating a national crisis. And Mossadek was sort of amassing additional powers within himself for himself basically overstepping the authority that he had even though he had the support of a good deal of the public as it became obvious that this was a bad move especially in the eyes of Iran's international trading partners and it was causing Iran to be isolated.

12:19There was pushback towards him and then he was removed. The British had wanted MI6 had wanted to overthrow him basically get him removed and they tried to recruit the United States to help. President Truman refused to engage in this earlier. Eisenhower comes in is more receptive under CIA director Alan Dulles to actually engage in this called operation TP Ajax led by Kermit Roosevelt who is the CIA agent officer tasked with this and then the Americans and the British basically help Fomenta crowd that is a part of the movement that removes Mossadek.

12:54Now whether it's a common I think misconception that the US CIA was behind it. The British had a bigger role in this. The Americans were more of the junior partner but they became sort of the public face of it but most of that was not this overwhelmingly popular democratically elected figure either the history is more complicated and regardless there have been many prime ministers after him and so he was known as a nationalist because he believed that Iran's oil should be nationalized and not really beholden to British interests and that created a lot of resentment and animosity but that began the US Iranian relationship really solidified when the Shah returned.

13:33He didn't leave really he just sort of took himself out of the country for a bit but he never stepped down and while this was all being resolved then he comes back and then the US Iranian relationship continues all the way through 79. So the UK and the US have been meddling in around for a long time and kind of you know exerting their will. The UK since the 19th century by far. The UK has been the dominant colonial force in modern Iranian history and they lose that power in the sort of 1980s early 1980s because the Humeini comes in. The British lose that power with the fall of pretty much the fall of the empire in the 1940s after World War II and the United States in 79 exactly and then since then the UK and the US haven't been able to sort of exert control in their will over Iran zero zero there's not even an embassy there because of course they took our embassy or they took over the embassy I mean it's been and it's been like ground zero of nothing for the CIA's power for any American power really for any Western power you call it a black box yeah it's a rogue nation it's a black box of information a rogue nation is a is one of a handful of countries around the world that follow no international norms North Korea is a rogue

14:40nation Belarus is a rogue nation Cuba is a rogue nation Venezuela was a rogue nation these countries that completely stand separate from the norms of an international society and in Iran's case it also became this black box where it did not allow foreigners in especially not Westerners it closed down its embassy the traditional methods for collecting intelligence were very difficult and geographically it's so far away and so far outside of the the sphere of influence for the United States that in terms of intelligence and military prioritization it just fell to the bottom of the list and yet look exactly where it is it's right in the middle of these and to Benjamin's point oil oil oil it's always about oil there's always a component of oil and there are so many other oil options in that region besides Iran right Saudi Arabia UAE Bahrain Qatar they've got the United States could partner with other Arab countries to get what they wanted without having to deal with Iran so explain to me in simple terms why Trump right now has decided

15:47that this is the best time to attack Iran I want to start with you Andrew what's your point of you on that the full picture of what his motivations I think the question that you just asked is the most prescient question that we will talk about today why why now why is it being communicated the way it's being communicated why was it executed the way it was executed so why is now the very the best of all times I frankly don't think it is I think that's the narrative that's being communicated to the world and to the public what Donald Trump did in attacking Iran goes against what the ODNI report assessed for the big the most likely threats against the United States and her 2000 in the ODNI's 2005 threat assessment it goes against the Department of Wars 2026 national defense strategy and it goes against the White House's national security strategy these massive doctrinal annual assessments for how the United States will will protect national security the attack against Iran goes contrary to all three of those in terms of priority and action so why now why the way that we've done it I can't answer it in any kind of logical way what's the non-logical answer it's a distraction it's international pressure with Israel it's a cheap

17:09win after a series of losses it's a last ditch effort before he understands he that Donald Trump and his party will lose control of the house in the midterms this year I have a little bit of a different take shall I um I believe the current administration is led as a completely top-down situation in other words like sole presidential authority this current president is very enraptured with power and with prowess with effectiveness and on the heels of Maduro and maybe even the cartel leader in Mexico I believe that the current president saw a moment of intense weakness that had been building no doubt and in warring in general when when looking at it theoretically like someone like myself the decapitation strike is the ultimate strike it's literally like it sounds when you can it comes from cut off the head of the snake and that is exactly what just happened why why they why why did he do that well I cannot tell you why but I can tell you what what we all know that this happened so if you reverse engineer what happened I think it become there's only one conclusion which is that I would think the current president said wanted to do this and was waiting till he had the intelligent the good and the intelligence part

18:47is beyond remarkable like how the how the CIA and NSA and you know probably DIA and NGA all of these intelligence agencies of which there are many not just the CIA were able to get that information to the president in that exact moment and make that strike and decapitate the leadership that has been in power since 1979 when they talk about the motives here trample often nuclear weapons as the motive saying he didn't want Iran to get nuclear weapons is that what's going on here in your point of view the 2025 national threat assessment that was produced by the ODNI in March so less than a year old specifically says that Iran was unlikely to pursue the development of nuclear enrichment or nuclear weapons that was the assessment of the the ODNI and that instead their primary concern was that Iran was going to focus resources into the research of biological and chemical weapons so the fact that in March of 2025 the ODNI the assessment of all intelligence agencies said Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon and then after the strike in June of the same year where we dropped bunker busters and for no further obliterating their nuclear enrichment capability and obliterating their program we have two documents that say they're not developing it

20:06we have another series of attacks that says it's obliterated and yet we're still saying that we need to attack Iran because of WMD we've heard that story before we've heard that WMD is a justice that the concern of WMD is a just cause for war and that was when we invaded Iraq in 1992 so what do you think the real motivation there is therefore is it's very similar to what Annie is saying that we have a current administration that is president down it's fascinating if you read the official documentation because when you read the Department of Wars national security strategy what you hear more than any other word is Donald Trump our president Donald Trump is leading America through our president Donald Trump the great Donald Trump like that it's incredible when you hear the speeches that come out of Marco Rubio's mouth repeat excess mouth what do you hear more than any other term you hear the name of the president usually you hear we or the government or this administration it's not around a personality so it's a very interesting situation because if there's so much of a person at stake here and everybody surrounding the office of the president is only there because they are respecting kissing the ring of the personality in the center

21:15and I'm gonna add to that further just for a moment if I may because on that point the button on that is that if I watch the president the current president's speeches to sort of you know discern and you can often see get your answer right there and in one of the speeches either this morning or yesterday he mentioned that the Ayatollah tried to kill him and it's to me it's like oh that's the tit for tat you know again top down or you could say schoolboy sandbox I say that as the mother of two boys you know this human behavior that is way outside the norm of you know intelligence reports and assessments and these long monographs that may or may not actually be effective I mean you know the biggest surprises of the past 40 years the Berlin wall falling and 9-11 were completely unseen by any intelligence reports so there is an argument that those intelligence reports are as good as a coin toss so I want to come to that point because the very fact that we have an Islamic Republic is the direct result of the failure of American intelligence to see that threat as early as 1976-77 a failure to inform then president Carter to do the necessary take the necessary steps to support the Shah and to neutralize that threat so the United States track record

22:40any run for the last 40 or 50 years is abysmal when it comes to intelligence and when it comes to statecraft and so there's that legacy number one number two October 7 2023 the Hamas attack against Israel changed the dynamic entirely that attack surprised Israeli intelligence and surprised Americans and surprised almost anybody watching nobody thought Hamas was going to do that when they did it and the means in which they did it so all of a sudden that forced a recalibration a recalculation of what's at stake what could happen if we wait for an imminent threat till we see actually the sign outside the door it's too late so from the president's perspective to answer your original question why now why do this I believe the October 7th attacks and it's not the best of Israel necessarily it's the idea that Iran we know finances Hamas subsidizes Hamas trains Hamas equips Hamas provides logistical support of on many levels so that Hamas can be what it was and Hezbollah also so you have these destabilizing non-state groups in the Middle East wreaking havoc destabilizing causing causing chaos you're the United States you're also dealing with a nuclear threshold state so Iran may or may not have a nuclear weapons program but they exceeded

23:54the 20% enrichment that they were allowed to do under the non nuclear non-proliferation treaty they they violated IAEA safeguards they they lied so you take all of this together this is a regime that can't be trusted the chance death to America which is more than Saddam Hussein ever did and is funding groups that had a risk that up until 9-11 Iran was behind more acts of terror that cost American lives in any other state or non-state group in the world 9-11 change that but up until that the marine barracks bombing in the 1980s terrorist attacks throughout Europe South America US Embassy absolutely the USS Cole right so this is it we've been at war from the president's perspective with Iran since they took our hostages for which they've never attuned for they've never been held to account for so if you take that calculus and then now we're in a post-October 7th world with a nuclear threshold state what happened that changed was last year six day a 12-day war in June created an opportunity weakened Iran enough in its proxies Hezbollah Hamas weakened if there's an opportunity to finally address this 47-year-old conflict this was the window to do it that is why I believe rightly or wrongly the president took the action

25:09when he did that doesn't make it the best window and that's what we're being told is it was the last best window I don't think it was the last best but it was a window or I agree from their perspective it was it was a window you've got everyone weekend you've got the the regime less popular than it's ever been I mean we saw the protest in January that led to the the you know the the blood bath upwards of 30,000 people killed on January 8th and 9th this was you know this regime is at its lowest lowest point both in terms of domestic credibility and soft power and ability to to use proxies to carry out its will why not strike it now would be the logic I mean I can give lots of reasons why you wouldn't strike it it's it's violating international law it sets a dangerous precedent it creates instability there are Americans dead at marades dead uh Saudis dead for what for for for for something that was already on the precipice of dying itself it's been dying for 40 years so why not let it run its course because because what more damage is it going to do what more October 7th can we see arguably less than anything that's already been done so it's like taking action on it's like putting down the dead dog after it's done all of

26:20its it wasn't well you I don't think that you could say to the families of the 30,000 some people who were murdered by the regime just earlier you know in January that it's a dead dog I don't I think they would disagree that's it's their country it's their people it's their it's their decision it's their right to self determination I'm not saying I'm not saying it's correct what was done I'm I'm just simply telling saying the facts of that which I agree with you know unilaterally that the weakened situation was perceived by this administration as the moment to strike agree and what is done is done agree and so I think what's more interesting to me is you know observing how America is dealing with this I mean we are in our own crisis America our own serious crisis and there are crises around the world particularly in this area and without having a crystal ball none of us know and I think that what will happen in the next two weeks will be profoundly telling interestingly people will say this was a good move or this was a bad move which in and of itself is a bizarre theater because your point is correct you've got you know America taking action in a place that's not it's not it's that's a sovereign country yes and to your point you've got

27:39you know decades of a menace that is now off the table I would disagree with that exactly we don't know yes and and the worst part is that in the lead up to this Iran's relationship with the with Russia and China and other countries that are successfully countering American influence worldwide had grown closer than ever before I think they're fair weather friends that just turn on them in a second it's what are you concerned about aren't you so so there's a number of things here so first of all with the removal of Maduro and Venezuela which happened less than 60 days ago and now the killing the assassination of a the decapitation of the regime which was the same thing you did here when you rendered Maduro right it's a decapitation that regime that's different I would say if you're going to you know extract someone you haven't killed them so that's not decapitation basically swapping out the CEO this is completely reforming the company I agree with that because because they were different countries they operated in different ways but when you attack the leadership when you attack the head of state that is protected under international law because because when you do that you open the gates for everyone of course what is it what is it the heart

28:49of your concern because it sounds like you're saying that this wasn't the right time to do this

28:53and and so what are the unintended consequences that you're for seeing so there is a domino effect that happens with every decision that the United States makes and now that we have essentially taken this military action against a sovereign country it opens the door for all sorts of other countries to just unilaterally choose when they're going to take action against another sovereign independent we have created more opportunity for more rogue nations which is a greater abandonment of an international community which destabilizes our global trade our economics our sense of personal security the Americans are less secure now than they were four days ago they're targeted now more than they were four days ago and if we if we are coming to the conclusion that we need to make things worse before we can make things better that's a conversation I guess we can have the debate we can have but with with the crisis that we have here at home with the concerns that exist with the stated prior crisis here at home we have an economic crisis here at home an immigration crisis here at home we have a crisis of politics here at home like the United States I would just say it's tribal warfare here at home I mean I watch it and it's just very very very

30:06dangerous keep going no no no it's just now we have just exacerbated that even more and we've exacerbated that more with an ally in the Middle East that just got done carrying out one of the most destructive attacks in history against Gaza you you brought up something you talk about sovereignty with regards to the January 8th the violence committed against the protesters you said that basically it's their own people soft determination how does the international community deal with acts of state violence against its own people that's so we have a word for that and it's called interest state conflicts okay conflict inside of a state a civil war right the international community has no responsibility for stepping into a civil war so that was that this is a great point this is the debate that the that the four allied powers had at the end of world war two when they were convening the Nuremberg trials you had this idea that we don't have laws to account for how a country or state treats people within its own sovereign borders the idea is that Germany could do what Germany did within Germany proper forget about occupied Germany within its own borders it could mistreat anybody because that was German law and the push was that that's not the world we

31:18want to live in anymore we want to live in a world where basically nations cannot do that to people and that's where the basis of the Nuremberg tribunals came and that's where we got international law of war crimes crimes of aggression genocide so on and so forth so the idea is that just because Iran is sovereign we we sit back and allow them to do that it wasn't a civil war because one side was fighting with with with knives machetes assault rifles the other side had spoons wouldn't you know I mean that kind of thing right it was so lopsided it was such an abuse and a asymmetric battle under the Clinton administration we chose to not be part of the international criminal court we pulled ourselves out of the very same conclusion that you're talking about yeah but Nuremberg was not but but there's also the ICJ there's a UN framework that's independent from the ICC and the Rome treaty so all I'm saying is we do have international law that addresses what nations can do to their own people and we violated international law by run by attacking a head of state so what what is the there's no continuity there's no consistency we choose to do what we choose to do we choose to support what we choose to support and we choose to

32:21abandon what we choose to abandon and how how do you make sense in a world like that how do you predict the future how do you manage even raising a family how do you know where you can travel how do you decide on investments how do you you can't that is a great point and I think that's the that's you know that's the point to be made here is that there's an absence of the enforcement of law internationally and it's victor's justice and the dominant will essentially exercise whatever will they want the law be damped do you think this is part of Trump's what his motivations are linked

32:52his personal legacy and I say this a lot because I think sometimes you've got to kind of follow the incentive structure especially if the president that can't be reelected who's talked a lot about wanting to win the Nobel Peace Prize although he's probably never said it directly and you it almost looks like a trump that's thinking about his legacy ahead of time and one's legacy is going to be determined by like the wars you you start the people you take out the Venezuela situation the economies seems to be really important to him do you think this is he's motivated more so by his legacy than say someone else I do believe that we are in a position where this is the first president we've ever had and I would love to be wrong please disagree with me on this but I think this is the first president we've ever had that's more focused on personal legacy than professional or political legacy I think he's thinking about Donald Trump and the name Trump and the Trump fortune and the Trump future more than he's thinking about the image of him on children's bookmarks as a as a president of the United States for the rest of the existence of the United States I hope I'm wrong but I don't feel like he's motivated by country by

33:56service he's supposed to be yeah it's not it's not country over part or party over country it's brand over country the Trump brand I would agree with that yeah I've never had a president talking about I might take Greenland might might go to Venezuela um he he fancies himself a dealmaker he wants a Nobel Peace Prize he he prads himself on the number of wars that he's he's he's he's he's uh I'm ended uh conflicts that he's solved I think ideally he would have wanted Iran to end up with a diplomatic solution he came with terms I don't think war was a preferred option I think it would be much happier if there was an agreement that we know allowed everything to kind of stay in place Iran would abide by nuclear restrictions missile restrictions proxy restrictions and then a Trump casino gets built in you know a Tehran that would have made him happy because yeah that is about the personal that is about the brand that and it's also he sees that as benefiting the United States benefiting the US's global partners in the region so but but I think a lot of this is personally driven I would I would agree I also find it quite fascinating that our Prime Minister in the UK Kirstama is not being asked about any of this stuff ahead of time I think if we go back

35:00a couple of decades the UK and the US were allies now it seems like the US is kind of acting as a

35:05lone force in the world and it's funny because you know watch Kirstama come out after the attacks have happened and he clearly had no idea what's going to happen same in Venezuela once upon a time you would have briefed us the president did go to the Prime Minister about I think using Diego Garcia in other bases and was turned down if I'm not mistaken right that that so there was some awareness that something was being planned and and the Prime Minister said that the the UK government would have no part in any of that what's going on here what's the the macro picture of in terms of the declining world order that we once knew where we had where it wasn't just United States running around doing whatever they liked and other people might be briefed or asked I mean I'm interested in looking at outcome you know and then kind of looking backwards at how we got there and I'm also very interested in how divided America is because I really do see it as the greatest weakness so you can show strength in what just happened but if you are extremely vulnerable at home then and I'm not talking necessarily about Hezbollah terrorists cells being you know activated which may or may not happen I'm just talking about the the clash of political

36:18parties in the United States and to that end I often look at the past and like so we're talking about you mentioned you know being friendly and having our allies and our and I can't help but look at the reaction of the opposing party right now at this action for better for worse but bringing up the Iraq war and talking about how we got our allies involved we went to Congress and I as a historian can't help but think but wait a minute the Iraq war was built on faulty intelligence the Iraq war led us into a 20 year absolute misery with so many people in this area killed and so many more problems metastasizing as a result and so to to be selective about what works and what what what doesn't work is to me as dangerous as a situation as we are in now and I know that's a little bit skirting away from you know giving you an answer as to why what was done was done or whether it's a good idea or a bad idea it just simply is very interesting to me because I can't help but see you know being a subject matter expert on the history of the CIA in particular I see these actions where it is presidential authority driven since the end of world war two and to me that's what this action looks like so we're in the new era where we are in which I find interesting

38:01is where the president of the United States can essentially take what would historically be a covert action operation you wouldn't even know about it that would be the idea instead announcing it as a military program so he's merging the legal authorities of title 10 and title 50 and of course the average person in the United States doesn't like oh wait a minute he's merging those authorities because what is what are the title 10 and title 50 well title 10 is the military must follow certain laws of war okay and title 50 says if the president decides it is a national security threat he can use the CIA's paramilitary that is an actual military force they sheep dip tier one operators over from the military and take the patches off their shoulders put them in non-military clothing and send them out to do military type work so he's using the military how he wants to use them yes and that's right as the commander in chief as the chief executive of the United States the D.O.D. or now the D.O.W. and CIA fall under the executive branch they don't fall under the legislative branch they don't fall under the judicial branch so the president has and always has had the ability to take these types of actions and write executive orders what's so different here

39:25is that while we're talking about CIA and CIA being used by the president in his exercise of authority what we're all not talking about what we're missing is that CIA has been gutted this is the same president that went to war with CIA in his first term CIA has gone through massive attrition since then they were defunded under his first presidency so director a cliff is the least used a director the least reference director you never hear about him is he the head of the CIA is the CIA and and what I am concerned about is that the CIA I left in 2014 was already missing intelligence on Venezuela and and Iran since then it's gotten smaller it's gotten marginalized more it went to it's been treated hostily by the by the US president and the CIA that I had started hearing rumors about in the early 2020s 65% of the intelligence that they were producing was coming from foreign allies what I would also say is that every CIA sadly you know has nostalgia for the former CIA if you look at history and believes that their CIA was better than the current CIA that's just the nature I'm not saying it was better worse I'm just saying the intelligence that the CIA is using now I I would argue that we keep talking about CIA and you

40:55keep seeing CIA in the headlines and it's actually not but hang on but hang on od and I didn't or at least according to shall we say the New York Times which must have come from the White House CIA provided the intelligence exactly so there you go fake I don't think that's real you don't think that is a shield here's the thing all right and how do you think why do you think why do you see I is the central intelligence agency which is by design it means that every other intelligence that comes from every other agency inside the DOD inside of the National Security Infrastructure has to come through CIA only CIA produces the final product for the president so therefore everything is CIA and CIA contain and CIA is the one that's in charge of maintaining foreign relationships with foreign intelligence services so when Israel has an intelligence report that they share with the US president it goes through the CIA so ever all credit and all blame always goes to CIA that doesn't mean CIA actually had the intelligence themselves so what who do you think have the intelligence and why does this matter the number one most informed country in the world on the goings-on in Iran is Israel tell me if I'm wrong no I would agree with that there's no way

42:05the United States would have been able to launch against Iran without close coordination and incredible intelligence support from Israel and I'm going to just why does it why does it matter because it means that Israel could be directing the activities of the US military by the intelligence they select to give to the president so I wouldn't take that step yeah I don't think Israel has a monopoly on intelligence provided we know that MI6 has also historically been very active and very capable probably more so than CIA has been and in large part because the British government has a embassy has diplomatic ties has trade and economic ties with Iran and it's and the Islamic regime has seen the UK as a effective sort of pipeline or conduit to the United States and has used that in the past sometimes you know to to better effect than before but I think that there's a I think there's sources of intelligence that the United States gets and Israel is influential but I don't think it is the sole influencer or the one that pushes it over the edge one or the other I wasn't saying that they're the sole but but when it came to Iran and I think we're saying the same thing they are they don't have the monopoly but they have the they're the biggest gaming town exactly

43:16when it comes to understand what's happening in Iran I mean I'm going to disagree because I think that okay look at past situations where the United States attempted to do a decapitation strike and then have a regime change you can look at Iraq we tried to kill Saddam Hussein failed and then a disaster blows up Libya tried to kill Qaddafi fails a disaster blows up Iran tries to kill the regime or decapitate the regime and succeeds so you are you saying that you believe that's because in the other situations the intelligence was coming from the CIA who didn't have such great intelligence and in this situation the intelligence was coming from Israel who did no I'm saying that that a big piece of the opportunity of Iran is tied to the opportunity that was presented to us by our allies in the region I don't think it's just Israel Saudi Arabia wants to see the end of Iran UAE wants to see the end of Iran Jordan wants to see the end of Iran there's multiple allies in the region that want to see the end of Iran but when it came to who had the longest most reliable human intelligence source network inside Iran I don't think anybody came even close to comparing with with Israel and you're saying that was used selectively

44:43meaning because all intelligence that shared with an ally is selective of course I have 10 pieces do I give all 10 pieces to my ally or do I give just the three pieces that I think will move them right they had to have those 20 individuals tagged to do their find fix and finishing period and of story it couldn't have happened without it and I believe that the United States the CIA aggregates all that intelligence you know Sigidge I mean all the ins to know that I can't imagine how Israel knew that more than the United States I just I that's my that's where I mean just to give you a very quick example right you're 100% right the people have to be tagged when you tag a cell phone let's just say we're talking about cell phones cell phones give you a geolocation every cell phone signal sends a geotag but only on the service network that controls that phone United States doesn't have access to most of the service providers in the Middle East so you already have to have someone to interlock you the Middle Eastern service provider with the West and then on top of that you then have to be able to identify that that selector that cell phone belongs to that person again if you think that the United States is so powerful it has every cell

45:57phone of every person around the country around the world there I think there's biometric tagging that is not necessarily electronic based so you're saying that I appreciate your point of view the point is that Iran according to every prioritized list that we have is on the low end of our priorities Russia's above them China's above them the cartels across Mexico are above them so somehow we had such refined intelligence on what's your conclusion here Andrew because I feel like there's in that there's a second half of your point that's missing like a conclusion that you're you're pointing towards but not saying isn't it just the lowest of the hanging fruits of all the ones you mentioned also correct it doesn't so what I'm saying is I it doesn't make sense that we would take this action unless we are really just acting on the behest of our allies for some other kind of gain a personal gain for the Trump brand if you will some sort of hegemony that the United States is desperately grasping for because we realize that we don't have that power and influence anymore and as a result of these actions and actions like what we took in Venezuela we have now empowered and validated some of the worst regimes in the world that we've always held accountable for

47:19taking the same kind of actions that we take and who you concerned about as it relates to other regimes

47:22China Russia this Russia I believe that a big part of the reason that that Zelensky hasn't been assassinated by Russia is because that would be crossing a red line that would that would infuriate Europe and the United States because you don't attack world leaders we just gave them permission to do so the same thing in Taiwan we can now China has free reign to just assassinate one person in Taiwan and and that's just them we're not even talking about Pakistan and India we're not talking about any of the border disputes that are happening anywhere else across Asia or warlords in Africa we just validated these these illegal inhumane extra judicial processes all over the world so unlike these other world leaders harmony was his philosophy his entire ideology is built on death to America among death to other things you don't have other world leaders you don't have the president of Taiwan saying death to China you don't have Zelensky even saying death to Russia he might want Putin dead but he's not sort of he doesn't want the demise of the entire Russian Republic so I think this is where Hamine stands apart where it is it is a movement which became a system of government predicated on the demise and the destruction of of the United States what's

48:41interesting we counter that yeah we're interesting with the term stands apart is I was imagining therefore a spectrum and the minute it becomes a spectrum it becomes somewhat subjective so you know one might say well we think they wanted to hurt us whereas before in my head when I grew up I always used to see these wars and go why didn't they just they know it the guy lives like I know that sounds like a simplifying but they know where he is why didn't they just take him out and it was always it always felt to me that that was off the table in what you can't just assassinate a leader because you don't like them where you're having a sort of geopolitical disagreement and it's actually only in the last sort of year or two that I've thought okay maybe it is free reign to just fly in and snatch him out of bed with their wife which is what happened in Venezuela and then seeing this that you can just drop a bomb on them wherever they are it does kind of make you you know wonder maybe this is now on the table I've never really seen that in my lifetime I mean I know there was some things that went on Libya and Iraq and so on but to snatch a prime minister out of bed with his wife and fly him over and with photos of it I go wow

49:35this is this is a new type of geopolitical action it's what the it's what our secretary of state is calling the golden era of the United States the old world is gone like these are that this is the narrative coming out and and being spread by the representation of the free world France they're the macro and justice morning stated that to be free you must be feared this is the world that we're creating death to America guess how much I care about that guess how much I care that a poor broke ass far away fucking pitily dank country says death to America guess how afraid I am of that zero and guess how afraid multiple people who have led the United States have been afraid of that they they're not you can say it all you want doesn't matter and when you do when you do carry out an attack right against the USS Cole for every one attack that's successful 25 of them are thwarted that's the that's the benefit of being the most powerful military in the world you don't have to worry about everybody who chance in the streets how many people disown their kids because they say I hate you when they're teenagers you don't you're like give it time they'll grow up they'll be fine they've got to go through their shit before they realize

50:54what it's like to be grown-ups that's what we say about our children the other you can say the same thing about a country that just came to power in 1979 they're less than a hundred years old what what do they know about how to actually be a country what do we know we're only 250 years old um I mean it's hard it's hard to swallow that like you know it's okay if you have like a horrible you know murderous brutal regime making women run around in his jobs and ruining entire thousands of years old Persian civilization you been to this part of the world I have not been to that that's normal life there that's what do you think is happening in the in the hermit kingdom in North Korea I mean should look Afghanistan we left Afghanistan and knew that that's what exactly what the Taliban was going to do right but but so what's happening here is not north since 79 is not normal but but just to go back to one step for a second who do we know launch the missiles that kill the supreme leader and all the other um in the uh hierarchy the the I think the credit is going to the United States no no no the credit is going to Israel so so so Israel is the one that if essentially push the button pull the trigger what have you the US provided exactly in which case

52:08then does Israel have the prerogative to take out a head of state that was you know essentially the only nation state might I remind you that um came out in support of the October 7 attacks was only a run not even North Korea came out and said anything no one else did how many absolutely said this was you're just a need of that October 8th he directed Hezbollah to join the war therefore is he a fair is he a fair target for Israel it's a great question is he a combatant yeah if I if I can you have a state better if it authorizes funds motivates endorses and basically encourages and shoves out the door your attacker do you then have a right to go after them that's I think that's maybe that's the $10,000 question here okay because because if you are will if you're willing to see the the leader of every country as in as a combatant they are the heads of the military the president is the the commander in chief of the military if they are combatant they are a legal target so if they're legal target why is it against international law to attack head of state and even more what's the acceptable collateral damage because Israel is notorious for assassinations around the world it's it's what makes them so difficult for other people to

53:16ally with because we don't support assassinations and most assassinations are not legal combatants they're scientists that's a civilian their experts that's a civilian their heads of industry that's a civilian their generals but not in a hot conflict that makes them a non combatant the space is you're talking about the line between civilian and someone who works for the government or is on a government funded weapons program or something of that nature the those lines are blurred in the middle east we know those are blurred everywhere a civilian works for a company that's hired by the US military is that person a combatant okay but it but those distinctions are are far more subtle in the middle east and especially when you're a scientist working for a state nuclear program that you're being forced to work for because you're one of the few scientists that can do it I I don't know are they forced to work for I mean there are there are defectors there are those who who opt and then there are those who double down and become religious cheerleaders supporting what the government's doing I mean the point I'm making is that you saying it doesn't give you the international under international law the right to take out ahead of state what if

54:21it was self defense that's not what it was I have a counter narrative here just to throw it out and kind of switch up the the discussion here you know this administration is very interested in in social media and for that reason I am too and I look at I saw a me that was going around immediately after this decapitation event so quickly in fact it made me wonder like who pushed that out that quickly and it's a white sheet of paper with all the months of the year of 2026 and January there's a picture of Maduro February there's a picture of the Mexican quartel leader March one day off there's a picture of the supreme leader of Iran and then there's a question mark in the other months and it made me think and sort of wonder speculate is this messaging to Putin that he better start negotiating with Trump no Putin's a whole different beast what what that's a message to is the leader of Cuba yeah Cuba as I can say next and if you follow what the United States considers to be the four state sponsors of terrorism the only one that remains after Cuba is North Korea you know every once in a while you come across a product that has such a huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as a game changer and I would say for about

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57:32entrepreneurship check it out now at whisper flow spot w i s p r f l o w dot a i slash Stephen it will be a game change a few why does the us care about cuba what's the context there what what is the

57:46us want with cuba well cuba's 90 miles off the coast of florida for starters so geographically it's very dangerous cuba was where the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles there you know almost bringing the United States to the brink of nuclear war during the Kennedy administration it's one of the only countries in the western hemisphere that does not fall under the United States' sphere I actually saw this yesterday the Cuban government is talking with us they're in a big deal of trouble as you know they have no money they have no anything right now but they're talking with us and maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of cuba exactly so Trump says that maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of cuba and he said that two days ago took cuba's next and then North career they wouldn't North Korea have nuclear weapons they don't they any so yes they do I always wonder that actually does getting to a point where you have nuclear weapons kind of mean the US will leave you alone absolutely I think that part of all of this is the sort of elephant in the room is

58:56that you cannot you know the United States will not let anyone else join the nuclear nine North Korea was the last example of that mistake during the Clinton administration being told by the leader of North Korea oh no no we're not gonna have a nuclear program and then him not you know deciding by sort of committee and all his sage advisors and following and talking to Congress and all that we're not gonna attack North Korea that would be unacceptable that was the democratic president Clinton's position and as a result North Korea developed nuclear weapons and now has nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons systems to strike the United States and has demonstrated you know a desire if provoked or actually has said if provoked it would do so and so you know you that was not going to happen with Iran certainly not on this watch and probably not on any watch is there a bit of an unspoken rule geopolitically where if you get to nuclear weapons you can do whatever the hell you want and it's the ultimate deterrence absolutely you can't mess with somebody who has a nuclear weapon and you and you and you don't one of my friends was asking me this morning where how the situation with Iran getting nuclear weapons is any different

60:14from the situation with North Korea having nuclear weapons or is it the same well it's the same thing it's only perhaps we're well now this regime is is it is up we don't know what will happen with it but having you know an ash correct me on this pronunciation you know the idea that the Shia idea that the sort of apocalyptic end is not necessarily a bad thing oh the arrival of the Matthew yes and and and and that'll think right sort of creating the conditions for that's how about yes there's a there's kind of a undergirding the Islamic regimes thinking is this idea and that's very dangerous to the idea that we don't want to have a nuclear war though that regime is not suicidal I I will sort of state that how many was was prepared to die for his cause but he is not suicidal in the sense that he would go out and sort of you know if you could I don't think start a nuclear war that he knew his country is going to get destroyed fighting that is I think you know one distinction and I'm not saying North Korea is suicidal but definitely what remains of the government there is not is not suicidal I don't think there is ideological die hards as we saw in the founding fathers of which how many was the last one so that changes a little bit now

61:26that he's dead you know there's a the philosopher Eric offer he sort of wrote that great causes start as movements then they become businesses then they become rackets okay so homani moos homani's movement that started the seventies that was the movement it became a business a enterprise of which the Islamic revolutionary guard corps profited immensely till it became a racket and now we're at the racket phase of it and the only one really left are the racketeering leaders you know and because the the spiritual leaders are now gone what happens next I think is sort of and you know we're now very much an unknown territory with that and you to that point of nuclear weapons if a Iran had already violated many of the things that said around nuclear weapons and then I think they'd have enriched uranium to 60% roughly they would have theoretically continued to go because they know that if you want the US and other people in the region stay away from you you've got to get nuclear weapons and once you get back to that point then you no one's going to mess with you so I think the assumption is that no one will mess with you with nuclear weapons I don't think that that is going to be the assumption for much longer I think that that Iran recognized that if it

62:32could get a path to a deployable nuclear capability whether it's a rocket or whether it's a missile or even if it's a truck with a newton trunk they had options 60% enrichment they have I mean that's a dirty bomb they have options there I mean with just nuclear waste they have options to cause real damage but enriched military grade sustainable kind of permanent state nuclear capabilities a much higher level of enrichment than that and that's arguably what they have in North Korea their deployability their capability for actually putting it on a rocket and having the rocket hit where it's supposed to hit not blow up on the launch pad is a little bit different and for that reason I think we have to take seriously the fact that if the United States wanted to demonstrate their power against the nuclear capable country they could do it against North Korea there's also this concept that our current military doctrine under Hegseth has applied that no other president has ever applied and no other Department of Defense Department of War has applied and that's this idea called burden sharing according to the Department of War their doctrine now is a doctrine of burden sharing which means they will force the burden of a national security

63:42interest on American allies an example is they go into Iran with a small naval force they bomb Iran knowing very well that Iran is going to spread the pain across our allies in the Middle East to the United States Department of War that is us that is our allies sharing the burden if they want to be our allies they have to do this same thing is happening with Ukraine and with Russia if you want if Europe if you want to counter Russia you must share the burden with the United States it also gives the United States now carte blanche to go anywhere it wants with a limited force stir up a hornet's nest and then let everybody else pay the price well in terms of the Middle East it certainly was an effective move because you know all of these six countries that Iran has now you know attacked in the past 48 hours are now very angry with Iran so the burden sharing has gone from kind of like this is a fight that you were not into this is a fight we are I don't think that anybody has taken any offensive actions against Iran except but they're not happy but they're not happy with they weren't happy before oh they but the the statements they put out are some of the strongest that we've seen I mean we've never even

65:01seen anything we've never seen the Gulf states put out what they've basically you know condemning Iran and holding it responsible it's now any pretense that there was a rapprochement there was some sort of a coming together is now shattered and that's a setback for whatever's left of the Islamic Republic the the power that Iran has over the Middle East is a power of agriculture all of the countries that we look at all the oil collegiate countries can't make their own food Iran makes their food so they've always had this weird relationship where they disagree with them politically they disagree with them religiously they disagree with them militarily but they're still allies because of food the United States has sanctions all over Russia except in one area space we still cooperate with Russia it's a carve out because we don't want to lose their access to the space program do you think we're closer to nuclear war now because of this action 100 percent

65:54so you do you think this is going to move just closer than 100 percent and and I've got there's proof of that all over the headlines today because France is deploying air launched nuclear warheads air launched nuclear warheads that means small warheads that fit on the ends of airplane rockets they're deploying them all over Europe that means France is now taking its nuclear arsenal and spreading it across its European allies the more nuclear proliferation the more risk of that's just nothing to do with the rain and that has nothing to do with the round what yeah that has nothing to do with Iran having two days after it has the threat of nuclear war comes from the conflict in my opinion comes from the conflict in Iran from the war in Ukraine and comes from Russia because you have an actual superpower president who has threatened the use of nuclear weapons Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon so it's it's not a nuclear threat you speak a different nuclear language than I do Russia is launching intercontinental ballistic missiles that can't be intercepted it's got the arrest Nick what the hell is it going to be afraid of a warhead on the tip of an airplane it's not that's a tactical nuke that's a battlefield but what is your point my

67:10point is that we the deployment of a nuclear weapon yeah is nuclear war the deployment of a nuclear weapon if you're talking about hang on mutually assured destruction are you talking about the use of a nuclear weapon are you talking about putting a warhead on an aircraft no that's that's been technology for a long time using it in the battle it's not being used in the battlefield I agree with you a thousand percent you don't think it's been you think it is being used no I'm saying it's being deployed is that getting us closer to nuclear war yes yes but yes but it's not but it's not because of Iran yeah there's nothing to do with Iran and what are you talking about being deployed because into you're talking about France maneuvering where its weaponry is that's the definition of a deployment that is well then we're talking about it I'm talking about nuclear use I mean the United States deploys its nuclear forces all the time by President Trump saying I'm moving our submarines which is just talk because they're moving anyways it's it's the same as it's threatening when Putin says I'm moving at my nuclear or when he tests you know Norway by popping up right offside outside of their shores those are maneuvers that are very dangerous I

68:23I absolutely agree I mean but in this particular case has the even from a Russian perspective has this war in Iran increase the probability that a Putin would use in my opinion absolutely not no in my opinion no in my opinion what it does to Putin is it makes him say wow this president is unpredictable and to some to an authoritarian person like Putin that's a match for him not someone for him to walk on and I think that I'm not I'm not saying that's a great way for world diplomacy whatsoever it's not diplomacy it's just you know it's just strong arming one another but but we are I do not feel at all that this situation makes us closer to a nuclear threat whatsoever I agree I think it's a combination of Ukraine and China's military exercises and action in the South China Sea and the whole sort of you know what we're not seeing there's this argument that China's watching what's going on with the US and Iran here we are depleting our interceptors our munitions China's meanwhile stockpiling you know it's resources and is it does this put us at a disadvantage if and when the day comes we're trying to decide to take proactive aggressive action vis-a-vis Taiwan that's something to think about and I think that then I'm worried about the risk of

69:50nuclear war in that instance I don't think Iran by itself in a vacuum is is moving the needle on that sort of nuclear risk meter to your point what this is a boon for is the defense contractor world is the military industrial complex because for example part of or why Iran is so weak is because they've used up so many ballistic missiles in their conflict with Israel I read today the interceptor to missile ratio something like 25 to 1 that the interceptors needed to to catch these ballistic missiles that Kuwait the UAE Israel is using they're like upwards of of 10 15 times more expensive yes and and these drones are relatively cheaply made these Shah had drones that they're using so you know there is that aspect of it too that Iran can just fire yes like a madman all these sort of expendable um munitions and meanwhile we're spending three four five ten times as much to intercept them yes although you do see in any kind of conflict like this you always see new weapons on the battle and and that's what happened now and America actually has been copying the Shahid drones these cheap we call them the Lucas these cheap systems that can just go in and you know cause havoc without precision and we deployed them so I think this

71:08was I think this is a long time I don't interrupt you see I think this is one of the big questions a lot of people are asking which is how long can Iran fight for in this war and what does that

71:18fight look like um that here in these jars you have I think it's the relative amount of soldiers that each country has obviously soldiers are just goes back to what Obama said about horses and bayonets the one form of combat but I was quite surprised at how big Iran's military is relative to even the US but other countries in the region I think they have the biggest military in the region is that correct so we have to separate between the IRGC and the national army they serve two different functions what are those two things the IRGC which any brought up earlier so the I stands for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps not Iranian what does that mean it's protecting the Islamic Revolution it is an ideological army that sits outside of the main structures of power accountable only to the supreme leader the national army really goes through the office of the presidency and others and you know even though the supreme leader has a saying it but the the army's job is to protect Iran's borders the IRGC's job is to protect the revolution and the ideology and the proxies and everything else that we have come to know about Iran so if we look at the if we look at those if we look at what's in the jar we have to separate what the national army which is only

72:27its job is to defend the borders versus the ideological army I'm curious what that would look like if we took out the national army and are left with the ideological force Iran have the largest stockpull in the Middle East of missiles drones and air defenses possessing thousands of ballistic cruise missiles and kamikaze drones this is their primary offensive strength and they have quite a significant defense budget as well but I guess the question I'm trying to get out is like how

72:52long can they fight for and how does that fight look over time because I know they shot with this shot hundreds and hundreds of ballistic missiles over the weekend yeah Israel claims it in the in the July in the June war last year it eliminated about half of Iran what it believes to Iran's stockpiles but also batteries launchers basically capability so if you whatever it was let's say they have half of that left I've seen a statistics saying that really they can't go at this rate Iran for more than two to three weeks before they're completely depleted well there's also an interesting move that the United States does well we didn't kill the supreme leader what we did do was send our B2s to take out missile underground missile systems which Iran has which are the aircrafts right no they're underground they actually called them the B2s the B2s the B2s the B2s the B2s the B2s the B2s the B2s the B2s the B2s the B2s the B2s the B2s came from the United States and this is a considerable considerable damage because the two ways in which these sort of rogue nations whether it's North Korea around work their missiles is they have them on what are called road mobile launchers so that they cannot be tracked and targeted or they bury them deeply

73:58underground and one of the only things that can take out those deeply buried missile sites is a B2 and that's what the United States said so how do you how do you think this plays out over the coming weeks and months because at some point yeah they might run out of missiles but that doesn't necessarily mean the war is over yeah I'm presuming that the US don't want to throw

74:16soldiers on the ground in Iran either so what like how does this play out and how long and that's one of the major strategic errors that we made in attacking Iran they have the benefit of time not us they can choose how to react when to react in what way to react we don't know if they have a dirty bomb that they're finishing up in some underground bunker right now that's just going to sit there and wait until American boots on the ground show up the fact that you guys think that that current nuclear deployments have nothing to do with what's going on Iran it's I want to respect that opinion but to me it shows just a lack of military experience and actual strategic intent to kill like when you look at how military intelligence operators are trained to think we are trained to think through a lens of maximum damage Iran is thinking through the same window right now and they're watching what we just did in Afghanistan don't forget we killed Osama bin Laden who was an ideological figurehead about kaita in 2011 and didn't leave Afghanistan until 2022 when we were when we gave up that's another 11 years of war after the guy that we were supposed to kill to end the war how is Chameleon is different Chameleon is different but how different

75:35I don't know yet and what are we going to do the the new leadership in Iran what's it going to be is it going to be a leadership that that kautaus to the United States that kautaus who are it's Israel is going to be another shadow government like the Shah and we're going to play somebody else in the Iranian people are going to love it or are we leading a vacuum that China and Russia are going to step into and now we're going to we're going to see a strengthened Iran that's strengthened by our largest adversaries in the world this is the reality of what we've got to figure out because whether they launch all their rockets in the next two weeks that doesn't mean that's the end of the fight for all we know it's going to come back and bite us in six months when some hezbollah sell lights new york on fire we don't know but when it happens arguably it's going to be justified to address point iran can wage war of attrition it's harder a war of attrition is basically low level warfare think of like death by a thousand cuts right i'll just keep poking at you enough to eventually wear you down destabilize you weaken you whereas what you can do is massive retaliation and these big sort of you know theatrical strikes war of attrition is basically grinding for the

76:41long haul and wearing you down this is something that to his point iran is capable of doing and is probably willing to do and sees is the only way that it can survive this is the war of attrition the war it's it's it's whatever remnant is left it's how Russia has survived so long it's war of attrition but but like i'm like who's the late do you need leader yeah or is it just lots of different pockets of people time will tell and you know hezbollah sort of sells around the world will tell us what happens but i think another way of looking at it i saw a a former member of the national security council commenting that like yes sells could be activated in america or they could just fade away and this is where i don't have a crystal ball and i'm just observing what's happening but i do think that the that all of this hangs on the razor's edge of public opinion because you know we time will tell whether or not this regime falls whether what you're saying if it's either or but i don't i don't think that we i don't think that we can know i just we've been here before to some degree too many times too many times what is the lesson from history that everyone seems to have forgotten that we are shitty learners of history that's what the

77:55lesson to your point of you know who the leadership would be something else that that philosopher quoted Eric offer had said that you know mass movements they don't need a god but they do need a devil so to that effect the leader doesn't matter as much as having an enemy does that is the so basically so long as we the United States or the western world is framed as the enemy that is enough to keep a war of attrition going absent any figurehead or charismatic leader and he was a religious figure versus just a political figure he was a religious figure but to your point he was the racketeer at the end yeah i mean he was running i made it effectively yeah and everyone in most people yeah absolutely thousands of people have gathered in public squares and terrain to openly weep and mourn his death to roughly 20% of the population are staunch ideological supporters of him yeah 20% yeah yeah yeah and it's interesting because you one can imagine that that 20% might grow especially if the the coming months make their lives worse in some way they experience I don't know poverty or whatever else and and then you know friends die because of this war it doesn't take long for narrative to turn and so that's what everyone's been warning about

79:03that you strike Iran this was a warning last June you strike Iran you're going to get rally around the flag the people that are secularists now are going to turn and they're going to start supporting the regime and we're going to set back the cause of let's say freedom or democracy it didn't happen it turns out that basically the people in Iran blamed the regime for their own for the misery that was that was put upon them and so I think that 20% will get even smaller as a result not just of this it would have gotten smaller anyway as a result of this I think it'll get even smaller still because their salvation is not at the end you know of a of a of a turbine or a robe it basically comes with liberty and freedom that this government this regime won't give them and so that is I think evident now to the 80% of Iranians all of whom of that mean that you know 80 80% of the population is born after 79 they don't know the old regime all they know is this one and what they know is they don't like it they don't like living under it and they want anything other than what this is you feel differently I think that that's an overly idealistic way of thinking about it we failed to convert Iraq when we took out Saddam Hussein we failed to to convert

80:05Afghanistan when we took out the Taliban Iran is not Iraq and Afghanistan though it is not I'm not saying it's the same I'm saying that when you when you change a government from the top down that doesn't do anything for the people no one's changing it there's no nation building we're not going in to do it in Iraq so what's gonna build it so what's gonna build it what's gonna change it the people the people that have been slaves for basically the last what 40 50 years the people who have had no education the people who've been marginalized you think they're just gonna understand there's kind of organize them so I know we educated very very highly I mean it's one of the most educated populaces in the world and I have and and they are very the the people that are not regime supporters are very western thinking I mean we see this we see this in in the culture they produce the media they produce when they go and they speak around the world so the populace is there the capabilities there the will is there all they need is basically not to be you know not to be facing the barrel of a gear about to find out if that's true and that is what that is what we are all writing on right now is whether this is intellectual minority in a poverty stricken

81:07economically defunct country is gonna even fucking stay there or whether they're gonna take their brains and their success and their opportunities somewhere else the diaspora and everything we're hearing says they are the people are cannot wait to help rebuild the country why do you trust what well his family is there so he's probably he's probably the worst the worst the people that you

81:30have a personal relationship with they're the least objective people that you can talk to so who are there 80% of the population who do you talk to exactly who do you trust you can't trust anything that you're hearing right now you can't trust anything that you're reading right now the information landscape is too to move that's I'm not sure somebody right it's not paranoid that's healthy it is absolutely paranoid to suggest that everything is misinformation one would believe at least I certainly believe that I have a faculty up here to be able to take information and try and discern what might be information and what isn't and then also be willing to stand corrected that's a very important part of it and that goes back to my tribal problem is once you have a horse in the race and you become convinced and I am hearing a little convincedness from you that you know then I believe you lose your ability to be able to go oh wow maybe I was wrong maybe this and again I'm not condoning what the administration did whatsoever I'm just listening to Benjamin and saying that is to my eye a much better source I'm journalist I'm going to listen to what people on the ground are saying they're certainly family members

82:46because their opinion is going to be legitimately you know heartfelt and not propaganda again we speak a completely different language when you talk to me about opinion heartfelt and family and belief none of those are objective no those are billions are born on those things by the way I agree yeah and and that doesn't make it objectively correct it was a rebellion that ended up in the Iran that we just saw fall apart that was a revolution that was a rebellion and you where does your skepticism come from what's it rooted in because you did spend almost a decade as an undercover spy for the United States in the CIA where where is the skepticism coming from why shouldn't we believe people on the ground who are saying what they're saying I've seen this stuff firsthand I've been trained in how this stuff works I've had to deploy this in in pursuit of American goals and ambitions in the past and and what's your saying isn't inaccurate as to how people react people we just trust the opinion of the people that we trust the opinion of the people we trust more than we trust the opinion of others only because it's our opinion that they're trustworthy at all so who do you trust to get your information from I want to take

84:01my information from as as far opposite sources as possible and then see where the information confirms itself where it correlates because if you if you see anti-American people saying the same thing as anti-Iranian people where their messages are the same has corroboration the number of dead leaders as an example this that's a corroborative point because you're hearing both the Iranian state media say that and pro-U.S. Western forces talk about it but what if it's your point of black box and you can't get information from the sources you're used to getting well that's it's that's exactly right it is a black box so if we know it's a black box we have to question every source that comes out every piece of information that comes out what we're seeing a lot of right now with Iran is called circular reporting it's one single source of information that comes out that gets multiplied over and over again we're seeing it happen in the White House too because the White House has kicked out so many journalistic legacy media outlets so now one story gets multiplied over and over again and we're seeing stuff that's that's repeated I have to say something I am I am a little bit skeptical about what is true I'm like the furthest from ever being a

85:05conspiracy theorist but a little bit skeptical of what's true because I did a post about this subject and obviously I've spent 15 years in social media so our whole business was building scaling huge social media ordinances and what I received in my DMs was like I've never seen before about what I've heard people talking about bots for decades and most of the time that they're actually the wrong it's something else going on with the algorithm or maybe something they don't like they saw so they call it a bot I received thousands and thousands and thousands of DMs when I posted about this subject matter and some of those accounts when you go on the page and you look at their posting history their engagement you look at certain patterns which we've built tools before to kind of spot some of these accounts on real and I say to my friends I was like well they're like I posted about this issue and then I had thousands and thousands and thousands of these accounts DM me encouraging me to post more about certain things first time in my life ever I go oh that was definitely it was so it's an influence operation just so what were they what were these bots pushing you to post on unconscious whether I should say or not because I don't

86:12want to infer by doing so you're I'm like inferring that a particular but I'm just saying I've never felt what I experienced then and I have I mean every this trailer will come out we'll see loads of bots we have systems but this was in my DMs it was encouraging someone like me who has a big platform to push aside narrative and that the only reason I noticed is because of the sheer volume and then the narrative was almost identical and I think well 1,700 different accounts of all over and asking me to do the same so you have final control over the edit of this yeah so there's no if you don't if you don't want what you say to get edit to get to get aired but then it'll get cut but one way or the other whatever you say like I want you to say what you saw because if the narrative was anti-Iran then you were attacked by western forces western bots attacking a known westerner if you were if you were propped up by pro-Iranian cyber bots then now you're talking about a cyber capacity a cyber capability in Iran that nobody's talking about so one way or the other or maybe an ally or someone else or whatever it might be I don't know but I just it made what it's that my point was that it's made me skeptical about my own information

87:19chamber and I'll be honest before I've realized what was going on very persuasive very persuasive you were persuaded by the bots before you realized they were nice things to you and then they're encouraging you to continue to to push aside narrative and it just took it took me a second pause and thought actually maybe wouldn't that be a perfect strategy in these moments to get people who have big platforms to just bump on their DMs and tell them that you know like why aren't you standing up for us and please use your voice to to speak on this particular issue and I thought actually maybe I need I need my information from somewhere else well I think the point that you're making which is very important it has to do with you know mimetics or popularity in other words what we don't know the outcome of this situation yet we don't know if the Hezbollah sleeper cells will be activated are they waiting to see whether what they do will be welcomed or will be demonized and I think that there's an profound influence in social media and that isn't true in this administration and previous administrations about the rise of pushing public opinion I mean that to your point that's what you worked on at the agency or you at least saw happen the fact

88:35is I'm glad that you're seeing it for yourself you can't trust what you see first of all if you're a single language person you only see what's in your language you don't see what's in a different language and then we all have an echo chamber around us and the the the fact that we have so much technology just amplifies our echo chamber our our algorithm sees what we see it sees what we like it sees what we pause longer on than something else and it gives us more of that and people become very wealthy and very successful understanding the behavior that people prefer and you give people more of what they already prefer and then it makes them happier and they don't even realize they're sitting inside of an echo chamber so for all of these reasons I don't trust the information I see I don't trust information unless multiple sources of conflicting values and conflicting priorities of conflicting goals where they say the same thing I'll give that more credence and if you can't get those sources because information then you can't have a conclusion so you can have a living assessment so do you not operate if you're a foreign policy decision maker if you're a president if you're a national security advisor you have to give advice and consent you have to figure out

89:41something you can say I have a lack of evidence or I have a lack of opinion or lack of information and therefore because they can't cooperate or verify there's no Venn diagram of I'm overlapping views that's when you have you have to use time as a tool you have to use time to to be the tool that you use to collect more information if you if you give up time you give up one of your most important tools which is what we're giving up with this attack we're giving up time so that we can potentially just fit a calendar January February March like that's why what what did we actually gain what how did the United States actually tangibly benefit from what just happened in Iran if in the United States how did we if in four months from now before the midterm elections there is new leadership in Iran entirely new if there is regime change in other words if there is by the president's own metrics victory okay will you change your tune on this the school of what did we gain what if it's not evident right now what if it is in four months I mean yeah it's a living assessment so of course if for all for all we know the president's decision is going to work out but for all we know it's going to get worse for all we know it won't be four months it'll be four

90:52years right of of of a drought and poverty-stricken in Iranians dying civilians dying because they can't find food and water the 79 revolution took two years to happen really began late 77 and then you had a sort of reign of terror almost like the you know thermidorian robes PR period in early Iranian in the early 80s where it took really four or five years for all the dust to settle but but so the question is do you want where are my results right it's only what are we gaining what do we even think we're going to gain what does what does the United States think it's going to gain

91:24from from decapitating the Iranian leadership that that's kind of obvious based on what the president has said it's that on what the president has said I'm just saying based on what the president says I'm not but if you ask what the point was according to the president because he's the one who authorized the operation it was putting an end to Iran's nuclear program and regime change I mean based on off of what the president said the nuclear program was obliterated in June of last year but there's a time so reconstituted they were looking to rebuild these easily here satellite footage of this why are you why are you disregarding previous narratives to adopt the current narrative because if I've learned nothing from 79 is that the previous narratives were wrong the assessments were wrong so I don't trust the assessments either but there's satellite imagery that shows oh there's reconstruction happening at Esfahan or Natanz or wherever we can see trucks maybe we can see buildings coming up right they don't have something to say it's impossible to say see it's impossible to to practically say no no no Iran didn't want a nuclear weapon they just wanted to have electric power I mean nuclear power you know that's that's not that's not really

92:40not a plausible assessment that's what the OD and I put into their official report how does you explain that they're going beyond 20% enrichment then why are they doing that and they don't need more than 20% so why so and it's and it's Iraq it was a racket it is a racket and we're talking about Tulsi Gabbard as a head of DNI which exactly exactly which is a great point and because she is a Trump supporter well you have not heard from her are you are we not Tulsi Gabbard has been a lot of things in her career yeah but do you do you think there was any risk of Iran developing you you ran him to the point that they could use that as a nuclear weapon because if you look at the timeline here of course um which I'll throw up on screen which is just a screenshot by 2021 there were a dangerous threshold around begins enriching uranium to 60% purity which is a short technical step away from the 90% needed for a weapon and by 2023 to 2025 we were told that they were theoretically weeks away from being able to create a weapon which is when Trump decided to attack you think that's false we only know what we're being told and what we're being told isn't even consistent between what's publicly being released by our own government

93:44and what we're being told in mainstream media so what you think is the and there's clearly you have it is it false I don't know I don't know if it's well just look at North Korea if you want to know if it's false I mean I interviewed Bill Perry the Secretary of Defense who went there and got the guarantee and the promise from the dear leader there was no chance they were going to develop a nuclear weapon fingers crossed behind the back thermo nuclear weapon and look where we are now and so I think it would be foolhardy for this administration or any former administration to think that that Iran wasn't doing the same thing it has every incentive to do it if I were right I would absolutely you know absolutely build one because look what it did for North Korea we're getting lost in the wrong question I'm not trying to say that Iran wasn't creating nuclear weapons I'm saying that the official stance of the ODNI was that it was not the official sense they want you to see to go to it right now we're getting now we're getting to your point like now we're getting closer to the same point right why would the president say something different than what the ODNI is saying to the public that is a failure in narrative control so there's an inconsistency there

94:51and that's the question we agree on that we absolutely agree on that yeah so what you think is actually going on I asked you this at the top but clearly you're pointing at some some sort of alternative so I think what's happening here is that we are seeing an administration that doesn't actually know how to govern and they're they're trying to find a way to grapple back some sense of success in the face of overwhelming contributing failures economic failures out alliance failures power struggles all over the world we are we are seeing a transition to a strong man multi polar world what's the strong man multi polar world it's what she was just

95:34talking about with Putin and Russia right you when you act in strong authoritarian ways and people respect your authoritarian behaviors by giving you safety and giving you security then that's strong man diplomacy and why does that matter what happens next because that's not cooperative that creates conflict that creates more opportunities for conflict less opportunities for communication less shared common interest which is a pathway to more what we call interstate war which is conflict between states because they're not communicating they're not sharing they're not even reliant on each other therefore it's easier for war to break out I have a sort of pessimistic thought here which is an alternative to that what was you know what was happening in Iran right now which is what would happen what could happen and what might happen in the United States and to your point that where you said this administration doesn't know how to govern I would separate from that whether that's true or not I would say this administration thinks very futuristically about surveillance systems and systems of control and you can see that with ice and with homeland security and my concern would be that red teaming or round

96:48tabling all the different possible blowback well what if we have Hezbollah sleeper cells you know set off a dirty mom in the United States or do something that that is in the eyes of some a perfect opportunity to create more of a surveillance state in the United States to use biometric surveillance platforms ISR against United States citizens because it's the only way to control people and to to really know where the bad guys are and that is a concern of so you can you can you be a bit more explicitly clear that so you're saying that well that you you in other words bio sort of I always just look at things because I consider weapon systems a lot and understand where we have come from you know nuclear weapons are the weapons of the past surveillance systems are the weapons of the present and drones what's the weapon systems of the future I mean you're there's a serious motivation you can just look at what happened with anthropic and open AI in the defense department the day before all of this went down so you're saying they're using this as a way to introduce surveillance mechanisms potentially on United States and I'm I'm not saying that per se I'm saying one hypothetical scenario

98:06that I can see is red teaming a bad outcome is not necessarily a bad outcome like if there were a problem in the United States as a result of this we could counter that with legitimate reasons for more surveillance systems do you think people sit around and say that I know they do really I mean I don't think you can ever forget that the Department of Homeland Security which by the way was like the big issue in the United States you know just a couple weeks ago ICE DHS Department of Homeland Security for those of the younger generation did not exist before 9-11 it was an absolute byproduct of America being attacked so you're thinking that this Iranian situation could give them cover to track and surveil U.S. citizens more it would create a justification I would change the word from cover to opportunity because I do think that's the way the systems work inside the you know executive branch and I think that there is a always an extremely powerful hidden hand that has to do with weapons developers and this sets us up for a false dichotomy it's basically you could have security or liberty you can't have both so which one do you want you're biting your tongue in there a little bit no he's 100% right and and the the the

99:30consternation that I'm feeling about this whole situation is really tied to the fact that we had a chance to not exacerbate the security situation of our planet by just not attacking Iran we could have not exacerbated the security conflict for every other country only Iran was struggling with their own decision about what they were going to do with themselves now we have put dozens of countries at risk active current risk near term risk there are people dead today that would not have been dead have we not sent bombs into Iran there's been property damage their markets damaged there are life height like livelihoods are being damaged there are 30,000 dead today who wouldn't have been dead if we'd done this in 1980 you're never going to hear me say yeah that I really care that much about an Iranian life compared to an American life that's just not how I roll this is my priority this is my citizenship I don't begrudge you that by the way I totally and it's not that my loyalty is elsewhere but I'm saying you're not saying there are people that are dead you're talking about the four Americans you're talking about Arab citizens like the various four Americans but also the Arab cities right and if we want it like the when we start counting

100:42death toll we start to lose sight of the fact that we all have to live in a prioritized world it's like we talk about the 30,000 dead Iranians we haven't said anything about the Palestinians that died in Gaza right there's a lie a life is a life practically speaking a life is equal a life is a life it's a tragedy to lose any human being so we still have to prioritize that on top of another so can we interchange them with the four potential lives that were lost as results of the Austin shooting that happened yesterday sure an American life that's lost is an American life that's lost and the priority should be on protecting American life including protecting Americans from themselves absolutely that's one thing that we're not resourcing right now because our resources are going somewhere else which is my point about I think you know the real place

101:26to look at this is is surveillance in the United States surveillance in the United States is is 100% a guaranteed future mass surveillance has already happened it will it will just get exacerbated expanded and legalized it's already there it's just the government has to buy their data from your apple phone they can't just pull it on their own I think it's probably worth introducing the anthropic piece here just because some people won't have context in July 2025 and Thropic who are a big AI company one of the biggest in the world the most exciting in the world and one of the most advanced in the world signed a $200 million deal to build AI tools for U.S.

101:59national security in February 2026 which was last month the Pentagon demanded Anthropics AI be available for all military purposes but Anthropic refused to allow autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of American citizens this dispute started after the U.S. military used Claude in its raid to capture Claude is a tool made by Anthropic and AI tool made by Anthropic they used Claude in a raid to capture Venezuelan president Nicholas McLeoduro in January which Anthropics had violated its terms of use the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to cancel the contract and brand and Thropic a supply chain risk unless it dropped its safety restrictions and stopped telling the U.S. how to use Anthropics AI and that started a big conversation which is raging online around mass surveillance which is one of the things Anthropics said it didn't want America using with its AI. I mean I think it's a convenient narrative to position one giant AI company as somehow moral because it went up against the defense department and another one not because it didn't because like you said in there Anthropics was part and parcel to the Maduro raid so I don't I don't believe that corporations certainly AI corporations

103:18you know are sitting around with the violin for American surveillance I just don't I mean Americans sort of general well-being I think they're not atroistic. No of course not and I think that narrative is dangerous. There was a research piece done by King's College in London where they ran simulations on Cold War style war games using Chatch B team Claude and Gemini which are three AI tools each played the leader of a nuclear arms superpower and in every single simulation at least one of the AI models escalated the crisis by threatening to use nuclear weapons Claude which is owned by Anthropic recommended nuclear strikes in 64 percent of games which was the highest rate among all three of those AI models but stopped short of advocating for a full strategic nuclear exchange when nuclear war. Bingo. Wasn't that the plot of the war movie war games in the 80s? Bingo I mean that's Skynet and so these are major concerns many of our former generals who were heads of you know cyber and NSA are on the boards of these companies I've had conversations with a number of them about this I think smart people are and and and and learned people are on are aware of like this is an absolute cliffhanger precipice. Just making myself a delicious coffee

104:39from the freezer? From the freezer you know how do I come to you? No. Oh my gosh this is going to change your life. I invested in this company called Cometia last year and then I wanted the sponsors of this podcast because they've taken a pretty revolutionary approach to making coffee. Every coffee is precision brewed at 10 times the strength and then they flash freeze it with liquid nitrogen to lock in the flavor and freshness and then it's delivered to you on dry eyes in these recyclable aluminium capsules still frozen like a lice cube. All you have to do is pop the capsule out add some hot water and then you stir it and you are good to go. You can also make delicious ice coffee drinks as well just pour it in stir it up and for anyone that hasn't tried it you can get $30 off your first order of Cometia coffee if you go to Cometia.com slash Stephen we have finally caved in so many of you have asked us if we could bundle the conversation cards with the 1% diary for those of you that don't know every single time a guest sits here with me in the chair they leave a question in the diary of a CEO and then I ask that question to the next guest. We don't release those questions in any environment other than on these incredible

105:56conversation cards these have become a fantastic tool for people in relationships people in teams in big corporations and also family members to connect with each other with that we also have the 1% diary which is this incredible tool to change habits in your life so many of you have asked if it was possible to buy both at the same time especially people in big companies so what we've done is we've bundled them together and you can buy both at the same time and if you want to drive connection and then still habit change in your company head to the diary.com to inquire and our team will be in touch what is your most likely scenario that would lead to a nuclear war like

106:33because you wrote the book on this stuff that you know you're you're the person that everybody thinks of when we think about the scenario that nuclear war could break out of all the potential roots there which one do you think is the most likely I do think that North Korea is very dangerous I think Putin is I would have told you five years ago that Putin would you know he's an intact former intelligence officer he's familiar with history he knows better and now I would I have a changed opinion about that I think it's very dangerous and I think that he you know his use of the Oreshnik was sort of like a like that that was a ballistic missile that is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead there wasn't a nuclear warhead in it he did notify the state department prior to the launch of that you know 30 minutes prior but that's like incredibly dangerous so everything is dangerous any nuclear armed nation that you know threatens nuclear weapons is dangerous but AI is its own extraordinary level of danger and the article that you wrote speaks to now my understanding is currently everybody knows that you know air quotes and then when you learn when I learned about the department of war and theropic AI laid at night battle over using AI

107:52in these systems I was I was surprised why because I thought there was more restraint on that and what I see in this administration yes and to see sort of the the same bravado that we do agree on is coming out of this administration about exerting power about just being able to do it to capitation strike effectively using AI I I go wow that is not what I expected the interesting thing with Trump generally is that he has a reputation of saying and doing things that at one point we would have all gone oh my god but we've almost become so used to these things that there's almost a desensitization to some degree shattering of norms they call it right he also contradicts himself I mean that's not even I mean he's spoken on the record about how I mean I think he put out a video in 2011 might be wrong in the date like attacking Obama for you know and saying that he was going to attack him in 2013 there's there's a there's a tweet that he posted saying attacking Iran is showing that you fail the negotiations and you know something to that effect so here we are talking about how important it is to change your mind maybe if you're not the maybe not if you're the president of the United States I think the slippery slope is it's so gradual that sometimes you

109:13don't see where you're heading towards and in terms of sort of military action and the use of AI and all these things and autonomous weapons it would feel like we're going down a slippery slope in a way that I haven't felt for the other 33 years of my life as it relates to geopolitics and more and also generally when you think about some of the actions that and speeches at Davos where the US leaders were saying to the Europeans listen you guys are weak now and we it was sounded to me saying like you guys are weak get your shit together figure out your energy situation we don't need you anymore listen we're not going to we're going to run this now and this whole idea of special relationship blah blah blah it seems to have gone out the window so you've got an emboldened United States military and leadership who seem to be able to do what the fuck they want if you don't let us use your air how we wish we'll smash your company we'll take away that 10 million contract and we'll cut you off from the rest of the supply chain and we get used to it you know we hear the head I'm going oh that's crazy that and then we kind of get desensitized again as humans do but the direction of travel is sometimes what you want to look at yeah versus just this

110:09this sort of static state of where we are that's the concern I think you have hit the nail on the head with that I agree I think you've got I think you've got a much clearer picture than most Steve on what's going on here the United States it has to pursue AI far more aggressively than what what the what the CEOs of these companies want I actually do believe there's quite a bit of altruism in the CEOs and the founders of these ayes they didn't create these ayes so they could be warmongers they created these ayes for some techie beautiful vision of some utopian future that's like things Zuckerberg didn't create Facebook for to to cause teens to feel bad about themselves you created it for people to connect for something else exactly right right look what happens that's yeah yeah unintended consequences yeah so regardless of what the United States' opinion is about AI it also has to very realistically look at how China is developing AI and China is already 10X more aggressive than the United States is and if they crack the code on certain types of AI like like artificial general intelligence or recursive recursive self-improvement if it breaks the code on these first it's an exponential head start over the United States and all of their AI

111:25everything that we have some sort of reticence about using automated or autonomous weapons mass surveillance China is already using so the the number one strategic priority consistently and all documentation is China so the United States has to aggressively pursue AI it yes I understand that mindset it is absolutely ludicrous to think that one day an AI helps us take that leader of Venezuela and then the next day we claim it's a supply chain risk that's just that's the kind of lunacy that we live in every day but but the my my bottom line concern here is that the United States used to be the leader of the free world we're not a leader of the world at all we're adopting more autocratic behaviors because we're seeing other countries succeed with autocratic behaviors and we're abandoning Europe which is the only place left trying to say that democracy still counts like we are we are not leading anymore we are mimicking we are reacting we are petulence but we are not leading I'm still thinking about your doomsday scenario with deathbed Vladimir Putin but he might do is that like realistic isn't realistic you know it's like from hell's heart I stab at the I mean it it it I don't know what's realistic anymore I

112:39again these norms that are shattered these restraints these these guardrails that we think no a leader wouldn't do this or someone wouldn't do that I'm beginning to question all of it too I don't know anymore what what someone is or isn't capable of and I think humans have a discomfort with cognitive dissonance where you know holding two opposing viewpoints at once we've gotten I think worst at it evolutionary over over time and our politicians are the worst yet or our word leaders are the worst at it yet and so that's a cause of concern for me I always think what what is someone got to lose them would have they got to gain and if you've got a couple of days left of your life or couple of days left in office and you're I don't know Trump's going to be what 83 by the time he gets out of office or something yeah why does he care if he pushes a button and does whatever at which point yeah you know and the same with Putin at some point he's going to be old and he's going to have a couple of you know couple of weeks left in his life and he's going to be reflecting on his legacy and he's got nothing to lose yeah Trump's got nothing to lose with there's no second term well he I watched him the other day taking great admiration to the fact that

113:41Zalinsky can't be they can't be elections in Ukraine because there's a war going on and I think he cracked a joke saying that he would kind of like that but if there was a U.S. war going on they they wouldn't be elections and it sounded like a joke but a lot of things have sounded like jokes before that he said so what is your what do you think happens next and also I wanted to get your take on you know we've got this map here which shows where Iran can strike with their missiles I've got friends in Dubai never in my life did I think bombs would be dropping on Dubai or any strikes or drones would be happening in Dubai and one of my best friends was in the basement in a bunker the two nights ago because of what's going on that whole region has been hit the Dubai airport has been hit Saudi Arabia's been hit and Burrain's been hit what does this do to the region and why Iran hitting these places so this is part of the burden sharing strategy that

114:37the United States military doctrine has put in place and I think to a certain extent all of the region already knew they were on Iran's radar they they've all had this weird hostile collaborative relationship with Iran out of necessity because Iran is the bread basket of the Middle East so they've known that there's always the risk but I don't think I ever took that that particular risk seriously why Iran are on doing it yeah why do they care about messing up Dubai or making people into by scale they are lowering the paint threshold the deputy foreign minister said we can't strike Americans in America we can maybe strike Americans at their bases in these Arab states and we can also strike the states that are that are hosting Americans Americans civilians American military American contractors you name it they're all complicit and it's lashing out because what happens is if you make it miserable for everybody then United States is pressured to bring this to an end okay so they can run have to lose to back to your sort of doomsday scenario they're about to be destroyed anyway what do they have to lose they're gonna take everyone down with them because only that threat is real well the United States say okay

115:44you know what we're gonna pause and see if we can get back to diplomacy and it might work if the Arab states you know decide that okay we're not gonna sustain this we're not gonna fight back we need this to end United States you have to stop what you're doing so we could see a lot of the conflict actually taking place in some of these neighboring countries terrorist attacks it's working it's working it's causing pain to these sort of peripheral countries that are not central to this conflict and look what the United States has done arguably right yeah and one of the unintended well maybe intended consequences is if I turn on the news in the UK right now the narrative is that this region Dubai all of these places Abu Dhabi it's all unsafe and what that means is they're showing the sky news are going up to families in Dubai and going how are you feeling and they go I'm stuck I just want to get home and this region have spent a lot of money building their reputation over the last couple of decades their tourist economy and this is gonna even if the war was to stop today there'll be a big cohort of people that she's not to go there on holiday and she's not to go and relocate there and that will reverberate one could argue

116:49that it's actually in you know this narrative that the Middle East is unsafe one could argue that that's actually in the interest of the UK and it's going to drive down the price of real estate yeah yeah and drive up our tax receipts because we have a lot of I think it's the biggest place that UK taxpayers have gone to and million has gone to is this region so do you have any thoughts on that no you're not I don't think you're wrong I think that there's whether or not I don't believe that Western countries wants to see death and destruction in the Middle East I don't believe that I do think that when they plan for blowback they account for that and they try to make the best opportunity out of the blowback that they already expect and that does make sense but at the at the end of the day Iran has to do something to react and it knows that it can't just send all of its rockets at the fleet that's off the coast of Amman because the fleet that's off the coast of Amman is gonna be able to intercept most of those rockets so if they want some kind of effective response the most effective response they can have is to share the pain and create some sort of international resistance against what the United States has done how long do you think this

117:56goes on for Angie if you had to guess if I had to guess I would say that there's going to be an active hot conflict with Iran that lasts a few weeks hot conflict meaning every day we wake up and we see new rockets being launched and new new attacks new new airsorties being launched but uh but the actual reverberations of this from Hezbollah from Hamas from the Houthis from whatever loyal stanchions still exist in Iran we could see that for years there there's no guarantee that Iran's gonna bounce back from this in a better place I hope it will but hope is not the same thing as reality hope is just hope I hope that it will but in the vacuum we could see the biggest adversaries to the United States flood in and support Iran like the biggest adversaries in the world flooded in support Afghanistan we might see that we have even less influence over the region in the future than we do now is there some an issue of the distraction this is causing to what's going on in your crane and in other parts of the world where there was already conflict and there was already time well like are people now not gonna pay attention to your crane so that that gives Putin some cover to be more aggressive there and it absolutely emboldens every authoritarian

119:03ruler out there because now there it's been it's validating to them that they're not actually doing anything wrong if the president of the United States can do it then certainly the Putin can do it and Xi Jinping can do it and and any warlord in Africa can do it it's certainly it's allowed or on the flip side it's showing that if you act outside of international norms that the United States president will not hesitate to decapitate your entire leadership which is something maybe we didn't think was conceivable a couple weeks ago so there's that inverse message is it conceivable that both might occur yeah yes probably that sounds to me like that might be the most likely outcome that you're probably going to go one of either ways you know China might say now's a good time to get Taiwan because I mean I mean objectively speaking people are distracted and it's a perfect chance it's a perfect time for someone to try to assassinate the president but then Cuba might say you know exactly look what happens if we don't what do you think Annie on this objective what happens next I mean I'm to that end I would say how fascinating is it that what happened with Maduro in January still shocks me 150 paramilitary or military and intelligence officers go in grab

120:13the sovereign leader and his wife in a heavily fortified military base take out his you know guardsman who are actually Cuban I mean there's just so many things to unpack and what I just said about what just happened and yet that's just old news that and that to me is more interesting than what might happen in the future not because I'll I can I can try and wrap my head around the past but I can't predict the future but I am I do believe they correlate with one another and only after time you know it's the old hindsight is is is 2020 it will make how Iran unfolds you know maybe we'll get the ban back together in five months and have a discussion and we'll all be wrong I don't know separate question but do you think Trump's going to leave office I mean the Constitution says he is

121:19do you think he will the Constitution says he is but do you think you I don't have a crystal ball do you think he'll leave office I do do you think you'll leave I do you do I have more confidence after last weeks learning resources supreme court opinion that we saw two justices who Trump appointed who basically defied a policy that was the signature of his of his second term his campaign his his tariffs and saying that you don't have that power I was in bolden I would have been more pessimistic but after seeing that it gave me a little bit more hope that that that there is still sort of guard rails and separation of powers is still a thing what do you think happens next in the region I'm with Andrew I think three to four weeks is the timeline I see for the actual kinetic war and then after that every one of these Iranian leaders whoever's left whoever steps in and fills a role of a whether it's a military junta that takes over whether it's a symbolic supreme leader these are all marked men they're all going to be targeted for assassination there's no by Israel by quite a bit pretty much anybody that considers them enemies even maybe now some of the Arab states for that matter at the end of the day it doesn't pay to be a political

122:29or religious figure in Iran so at this point I think what we're going to see in the months to come is a slow fracturing of that support and I'm not surprised if we start seeing defections from the IRGC and people just like we saw during 1979 saying you know what it's not worth it there's that there's no there's no long-term gain here because this regime has lost any credibility domestically there's none left zero and it's losing credibility in the region it violated an unspoken agreement with its Arab neighbors that they don't directly fight each other in this way and its allies so-called allies have abandoned it it has nothing left so when you have nothing left what is there to fight for that's why but that's going to take a few months up to a year to play out what is the most important thing that we should have talked about that we didn't talk about you as it relates to all of the stuff we talked about today I think for me what I'm always what I always

123:20come back to is what is the future for the average American what does it look like for us I'm not sure how this plays out I'm not sure that we improved the state of the average American very much in the last few days I don't know that we will see much improvement in the next few weeks I don't know that we will see much improvement in the next few years because of what actions we took in Iran but I do confirm I agree with what the other two have said like with the United States administration has shown it's powerful in Venezuela it's powerful in in Iran Cuba is already being more than whispered about as the next the next transition in government how how much chaos are we going to see to the existing world establishment before Trump then leaves office and somebody else has to come in and pick up the mess and I've always been concerned not about Donald Trump but about who comes after Donald Trump why because if Donald Trump paves the way for this authoritarian type of shift and if he has support through his final days in office then whoever comes next will have even more legitimacy to come in with a strong hand from the beginning and potentially a world where only authoritarian actions work and that just continues to take us down a road of pain I've

124:38been talking to you about this for the better part of three years that I believe the United I believe the world and especially the United States is is coming into one of its darkest decades ever this is the world that we live in now a world where it's not unipolar a world of AI technologies we can't predict of conflict that we can't anticipate of mass surveillance of of the breaking of international norms this is the world we are coming into now it's the world that our children are going to be developed in it's the world that one day they will have to create their own future in and and our grandchildren will inherit whatever's left of it after that it's it's sad to me to see that this is where we are and unless we take some sort of responsibility for our own future we will keep following this authoritarian trend but isn't this better than the past I would say no a unipolar world where the United States is a supreme power as an American that is a better world but at least you won't die of dysentery out in the wilderness right yeah I mean that's kind of what people say right they say well babies aren't dying anymore at childbirth and you know people are struggling with poverty so so it's a better depends what metric you're measuring I guess but

125:48on on that point of the transition after Trump leaves would it be worse if a weak leader came in because I'm I'm wondering look we know Putin's still going to be there we know a lot of these other powers are still going to be there Biden didn't strike me as the the scariest guy in the world the most the toughest guy in the world didn't strike me as the tough guy in the world so if another figure like Biden came into power after Trump once with that wall raging over there and with you know China um thinking about Taiwan etc is that not even more dangerous I think there's a difference between a strong leader and a strong arm a strong leader can chart a path keep a vision make hard decisions balance priorities keep people focused where a strong arm is out to win and Donald Trump his entire career he's been the man who's out to win again I don't think this is a Trump issue I don't think this is a Trump problem I don't think Donald Trump is some villain of the world I just think Donald Trump is the manifestation of how most Americans felt at the time that they elected him which was like we want to win and now we're realizing that two years after the second time that we wanted to win there are other secondary consequences that we hadn't

127:05considered and that's why so many of the kind of groups that supported Donald Trump have changed flavor about him it's why approval rating is so low because he's found a way to ostracize so many of the groups that used to support him because they didn't realize that he was more complex than what they had originally thought back in that November youth Annie most important thing we should have talked about it didn't I'm gonna pick up on Andrews thought about a strong leader versus a strong arm because it's so important to think about moving forward and is that even possible you know yes we absolutely cannot have a week leader I mean look what happened with Putin moving into Ukraine taking you train attacking Ukraine and I I I think that you know who wants to be president there's also this idea of you you know you look at the records of how people say come into office how they how they campaign saying what they are I'm going to get rid of these dangerous nuclear policies I'm going they have all kinds of optimistic ideas about things and then something happens in that first briefing something none of us know it's so mysterious and they never talk about and then their policies and their their perspective deeply changes

128:25and I think people move from an idea that they can be a strong leader to the idea that they have to be a strong arm and I think that's that's deeply depressing to me and I am an eternal optimist so I want to see that change presumably they're being made aware of the real threats that they face that the US faces and suddenly what was I know theoretical becomes very real perhaps and so the I who loves narrative the question is what is that narrative and anything that is kept absolutely secret I want to know about and I no one knows that answer no president has ever spoken of it so what is that narrative what are they told it's definitely not aliens it's a conversation for another time Benjamin um here right here Taiwan so I've been working on a simulation a war game that looks at something that's become up in the news now what happens if we don't need China to invade Taiwan we need China to just blockade and completely cut off 90% of the chips and microprocessors and all the things we need in this AI age into the West what the hell do we do under that scenario we don't have the infrastructure the capacity the resources to bring everything back online that we need to to fabricate and make these chips um we talked

129:46about China a bit but I'm really worried about this what happens here is so because we realized so much on that little island um and we don't need it invaded we just needed blockaded kind of so what we see in the straits of hormones happening right now 20% of the world's oil opac can increase production it'll take a few weeks to bring it offline stabilize the markets we don't have that luxury here not when it comes to the very things that powers the next generation of warfare and diplomacy and you can talk development I don't think the average person realizes how much the West relies on that little island 90% of our at least here in the United States 90% as I understand it that comes from from that from that one island the chips that are in our electrical devices hmm why don't they just move it over here they're trying they're trying not they're trying right yeah it takes years it takes years to get it cleared it's very environmentally damaging the infrastructure takes time the expertise isn't here all the IP that's on that island comes from the United States but the actual factories have been there and will be there I guess there'll be a big labor cost impact as well absolutely regulations all kinds of things we have to

130:50work our way around and figure out how and then you know training the workers to be able to fabricate them due to as efficiently yield you know results that are that are high enough so that's your concern huge concern I mean our communications could shut down our cars because I mean so many things can go wrong if we lose the capacity to power the devices that we need what advice would you guys give this my last question I promise what advice would you give to the average person you know because he was talked theoretically about geopolitics and the average person's at home can't do a lot about that but if you were to give advice to the average person who's thinking about their family about their future about their work what would you say we are not helpless it's not out of our control but we do have to assert our control there's a midterm election that could effectively quasi effectively block the decisions that the president can make unilaterally if we exercise our right to vote we create either a blue senate or a blue house of representatives arguably we have demonstrated our ability to exercise our right to vote and taking back some semblance of control in our country but unfortunately I think people don't

132:06like waiting they don't like taking seven months before they can take an action they want to do something right now and and we live in a country in a democratic process where we get a chance to exercise our power every two years so we have to actually show up and exercise that power what are you doing for you and your family we're leaving the United States why because the United States is not going in the direction that I believe is the most conducive to the kind of citizen that I want to build in my children I don't want my children to grow up in a country that is either afraid or angry I don't want my children to grow up in a country that's constantly compromising its own democratic principles I don't want to raise my kids in a country that puts capitalism before all other things I want my children to grow up as global citizens to recognize that we're all interconnected to value every human life I wasn't given the privilege I was the perfect candidate to sit here and tell you that American labs are more valuable than everybody else that's not what I want to pass to my children I want my children to look at lives around the world as valuable independent individual blessings and I can try to teach them that but that's not the message

133:14that they get so are you going to go that's for me to know and Costa Rica absolutely read as much as you can across the broadest spectrum that you can find and have conversations about what you think you know and what you want to know with as many people as you can across the broadest spectrum you can and don't be afraid to have a little bit of friction like we had here today that that's the way it works and that's how the mind stays fluid and flexible and you can always realize that you're wrong amen I think that's increasingly important in the age of misinformation disinformation is to be able to have conversations like we had today where you have an opinion but you're open minded to listen and something that I think is increasingly important but increasingly rare even as a podcaster you're kind of forced to fit somewhere you're pushed to be on the right or pushed to be on the left or pushed to believe this or pushed to believe that and it takes especially in the modern world with algorithms here in New Everyday it takes some restraint and thoughtfulness to try and remain open so I love that message and I hope for our audience that listening I hope that that's what they do as well like even if they don't like you guess we haven't the show or they

134:32have a different opinion I hope you can at least bring yourself to listen and fight the cognitive dissonance which is very natural in human instincts to to hear them out and to allow those ideas to clash with your own to arrive at your own conclusions Benjamin I'm going to echo a lot of what Andy said stay curious I think podcasts like yours and I think others do a great job of exposing people to different things they didn't think of so continue to feed that curiosity and cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable but it is a good thing because it forces us to think of opinions that we wouldn't otherwise and I try to teach my students the power of empathy which basically means you don't have to like the other side you can hate the other side but just see the world as they see it for a moment before you do so I think empathy is critical why do we find more of your work Benjamin I mean for me it's I'm building out ways to be able to find more of it but on on socials on X and on Instagram I try to post as often as I can and I give talks when I can yeah you haven't reached the book yet not yet I'm designing a simulation platform that's sort of my product but it's not available to the masses yet and Annie where books are sold

135:40I mean you've got a lot of them but you write fantastic books any particular one you would like people to read start at the beginning okay I'm ready or start at the end the any anthology I'll link them all below in the description so people can find them and Andrew you can find me at everydayspy.com the business that I own you can find me everywhere it as my name Andrew Boostamonte and and yeah YouTube and you written this great book Shadow Cell which has been a smash hit with New York Times best seller wasn't it yes sir it was and this is when we talked about this in our last episode but I took a long time to get this book declassified I believe and get permission from the CIA to release it and it's a fascinating story of uncovering a mole within the CIA which is fascinating so thank you again all of you for getting together and demystifying a lot of this stuff for me it's helped me to build my own perspective on what's going on in the world and I hope we can have you all back again soon once we figure out what actually happens so thank you so much I appreciate a lot thank you you