Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Fareed Zakaria Breaks Down the Future of AI, Israel v. Gaza, & Why China Won’t Fail

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

YERRR – the boys brought in global brainiac Fareed Zakaria to explain literally everything going on in the world right now – and this man did not miss. From Trump’s tariffs and broken promises to the AI revolution and why the middle class keeps getting bodied, Fareed breaks it all down with surgical precision. He dives deep on Israel’s aggression, U.S. bombing Iran, birthright citizenship, and what the hell is going on with rare earths, semiconductors, and China’s grip on Africa. Plus – healthcare, right-wing populism, fusion energy, and why DOGE might’ve been the beginning of the end. All that and way more on this week’s episode of FLAGRANT. INDULGE. 00:00 Welcome Fareed 1:05 No net positives with Trump tariffs 7:10 Restoring industries + Embracing tech 12:10 Consumption is king 15:28 Reliance on allies + Rare earths 22:45 No industrial revival, AI + UBI 29:52 Middle class left behind + Networking 42:44 Healthcare incentives + Simplification 54:13 Balancing budgets + Cultural backlash 56:50 Right wing populism + New asylum system 1:07:19 Du Plessis vs Chimaev 1:10:51 Birthright citizenship + Compromising morals 1:17:40 US bombing Iran + Israeli dominance 1:21:58 Why is Israel acting like this? 1:28:22 What does Israel give the US? 1:30:43 Greater Israel + Iranian sponsorship 1:39:21 US supreme dominance + Peace in Middle East 1:46:52 Saudi Arabian reform + Markets find a way 1:52:06 Türkiye, Power hungry + Enticements 1:57:30 Striking deals + Long-termism 2:04:19 USAID + DOGE failure 2:08:56 Indian support of Modi 2:16:13 How long to create new manufacturing? 2:20:13 Chinese economy + University Research 2:27:03 Taiwan + What is a semi-conductor? 2:35:22 China's influence in Africa 2:37:44 How close are we to fusion? 2:41:14 Kissinger's negotiations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Today we are joined by a man with the jawline of a Bollywood sex symbol and the hairline of Count Dracula. Born to a Muslim family in India, he became an American citizen in June 2001. Just made the cut. More importantly, he's a renowned journalist, expert in US foreign policy, geopolitical affairs. He's a three time as of last week Emmy winner, a Peabody Awards winner, and has become one of the most insightful voices on global affairs and geopolitics despite working for CNN. Today we're giving you the ultimate 2025 explainer on every major geopolitical conflict from Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, Russia, Epstein Island to Love Island. We'll be diving deep into everything happening in the world. So give it up for the most successful H1B visas in US history.

Fareed Zakaria. Thank you so much for taking the time, man. We hope you enjoyed our introduction. Oh my God. Did we get everything right? It was all totally factory, right? It makes you realize sometimes in life, inflation is a good thing. So tell us what's going on in the world man, like what are you I know right before we start you said you want to talk about America

It's relations to its allies the terrorists the Trump stuff But is there anything I mean we can even start there. Do you think there's been any net positive to the tariffs? Honestly, no, I know you're supposed to say on the one hand, on the other hand. You can say whatever you want. I'll tell you, to me, the tragedy of this is, like, one of the superpowers of America, the real superpowers, is that we have this group of countries that are our allies,

that are friendly with us, that trade with us, that we've built this ecosystem. And so, you can't just look at what we can do. What you have to really ask yourself, what can we do along with Europe, along with Japan, along with Australia, along, because they're all on board. They're all part of the American ecosystem.

And if you look at the tariffs, the way Trump is doing them, they actually get slammed the most because they're being punished for trading with us closely. Because the ones that we have a lot of trade with are the ones that end up getting the worst. Tariffs even higher.

Tariffs. I mean, crazily, the one country exempt from all the tariffs is Russia. But even if Trump had thrown Russia in, the truth is we don't do that much business with Russia. Maybe that's why. So it wouldn't make a big difference. But it's the Canadians who've linked their economy to ours for the last 30, 40 years that are getting slammed. It's the Mexicans who've reformed their economy to essentially make it almost like an integral

part of the American supply chain. We don't make cars in America anymore. We make cars in North America. The parts go back and forth 16 times, which is why the tariff rates are sometimes really high because every time one part crosses a border, you gotta pay that tariff. And it's the Europeans.

So to me, that's the tragedy. It's like, we don't realize that that's the unique thing about America. Like, you know how many military alliances China has? Russia and North Korea. You know how many military alliances China has? Russia and North Korea. You know how many we have? 59. Yeah.

Right. That's what makes us special. So help us understand this. Just like the average American like myself doesn't really know much about this. I keep hearing people saying, oh, these tariffs are devastating. They're bad for foreign relations. They're bad for foreign policy. Yet many of these countries that we

are now imposing tariffs on, tariff us. So why is it only bad for foreign relations when we are tariffing them? I think the average American looks at that like, well, tariffs can't be that bad for foreign relations if they're all tariffing us. Right. So first important thing to understand again, among our allies, this is the advanced countries in the world, average tariffs before Trump came to office were two and a half percent. So for everyone. So you can always find some- Averages get tricky though, right? Agreed. So the Europeans protect their agriculture.

And so how much do they tariff us on on agrarian products? They there so there are two kinds of things one they tariff us. No, it's not so much the tariffs It's they don't take they don't import American chicken. They refuse to take our stuff because they believe that we want Our chicken is washed in chlorine. They think that that's that's bad, you know, there are a lot of issues that there's a lot of issues on which You know, there are a lot of issues on which Europeans basically agree with RFK Jr. Which is to say that we have too many chemicals in our foodie and things like that. They might be right about that. I agree. I actually think they're right about it. One of the few areas where I totally agree with RFK Jr. is on all that stuff.

You know, he points out if you look at it. On everything he says. A box of cereal, cereal in Europe, has like eight ingredients, the same box of cereal has 18 ingredients. Like what are the 10 things that we're putting in that they banned? So some of it is those kind of tariff barriers, non-tariff barriers, but the main point, because what you're saying is true,

is they tariff us. Look, main point, because what you're saying is true, is that they tariff us. Look, everybody protects a few things, but we lived in a very low tariff world, so that these things, these were not major distortions. And you could have your pet peeve, like you wanted to protect some agriculture, we wanted to protect something. What we've done is we've gone from two and a half percent, we're at 15% now. So that's like a six-fold increase. And what that's going to do is make everyone else raise their tariffs more. So suddenly everybody- Why would it do that? Because they have to retaliate, right? Well, because their feeling is if you're blocking

our goods, we're going to block your goods. But what if we say, no, you don't do that? You have access to our market, and our market is bigger, and therefore we have some leverage. Right, and so that is essentially what Costco is doing. Like when Costco buys a bunch of stuff, they get a much lower price. So when we buy a bunch of stuff, we get a much lower price. Now remember, the European Union, which on trade access won, have about as much power as we do in that sense. Their market is about as big.

But we're dismantling that European Union every day. No, no, on trade stuff, they're pretty unified. So we've got England out of there, so we're going to break it down, so we can manage. I don't think England's doing great on its own. I tease, but like, so you're right, the two kind of players that can go mano a mano are the Chinese and the European Union, because they've got enough, they've got a bunch of leverage, but you know, we'll always have a slightly higher, so you're right, they won't raise them to the level we do, but they'll raise them a certain amount.

And all my point is who suffers? The consumer, right? The American who goes to Walmart and now his food is more expensive, his clothes are more expensive. And by the way, you don't give a shit whether this shirt costs costs you 20% more but but I know but there are people who Really person who lives on thirty five thousand dollars a year So walk me through this because I I'm not an economist but the theory to me that I understand. Oh, thank you, dude I appreciate like I really I put on my wife. I was I was I was complimenting him so much

I forgot how handsome you were. Thank you. I appreciate that. I was feeling like that Go along with that. Yeah, I you. I appreciate that. I was feeling left out. Anyway, I would go along with that. I mean, he's a good looking guy, right? I fully disagree. Tam's like a tantrum. So anyway, as you play out this America First thing, I understood the idea. We go to middle America a lot for these shows, and I see there used to be manufacturing there, and there's not.

And I actually empathize with what they thought Make America Great meant. A lot of them, I'm sure there were racist people, but I think a lot of them were like, yo, we used to have manufacturing, we used to have jobs in the city, and now there's nothing. So, in my mind, as I play that out, does that not eventually force America

to build its own warehouses back up, to build its own manufacturing back up, maybe even forward thinking things like super computer facilities or whatever. Do the tariffs not, in the long run, pay off in that sense or not? So it's a great question because that is at the heart really of what Trump is trying to do.

And I totally agree with you that that is a huge problem that we that we de-industrialize and we de-industrialize very fast and and like it hurt certain areas a lot more than everywhere. But here's the problem. When you look at every rich country in the world, what has happened is over time you lose manufacturing and you move into services. And it's a very simple reason why. As you get richer and richer, look at your own lives, okay?

As countries get richer and richer, they buy less stuff and they buy more services. So if you look at 1960, about half of all American consumption was on goods. Now 25% is on goods, most is on services. Can you give an example of a service that we would transition to? What we are doing. Entertainment, software, software services. So going out to shows, dining out would be, these are all services? All services, law, accounting, finance, law accounting finance consulting software software services entertainment

opposed to a developing country would spend more money on making steel making Aluminum so the newly industrialized nations are putting as much the possible emphasis that they can on that Whereas we're you know buying movie tickets now give me give you a simple you know 80% of the American Now, give you a simple, you know, 80% of the American economy in terms of employment, 80% of Americans are employed in the services economy in America. You know how many are employed in manufacturing? 8%. And actually, of that 8%, half of all manufacturing jobs are in branding, sales, which are service jobs.

So really, it's 4% on the factory floor. So you're taking 85% of Americans, you're taxing them, you're penalizing them to subsidize this 4% which is shrinking. Now, so let me just say one thought, which is the reason we've surged ahead of all the other countries in the world over the last 30, 40 years, and we have, and I can go through the numbers if you want,

is because we embrace the future. We said we're going to lean into technology. We're leaning into services, software services. We dominate the world in terms of entertainment. We export all that stuff to the world. We have huge trade surpluses. We send out a lot more of that than we buy of anybody. What was the last, you know, Kazakh movie you saw, right?

And Borat. And Borat doesn't count. But by the way, Trump doesn't count this. For him, the services economy doesn't exist. All he looks at when he looks at these tariff rates is stuff, goods. How many, you know, cars did I sell you? How many cars did I buy? All he looks at when he looks at these tariff rates is stuff, goods. How many cars did I sell you? How many cars did I buy? But the point is we became the world's leading economy because we leaned into the future.

And that's where, so I'll give you a simple statistic. German wages and US wages 25 years ago were roughly the same. Roughly speaking, we were a little higher. We're now like our wages are 30% higher than German wages. European wages on average were 50% higher. If Britain were to join the United States as the 51st state, Britain would be poorer than every state in the union. It is poorer than Mississippi on a per capita GDP basis. Fucking ridiculous.

Why? Why? Because we embrace services. So how can they sustain life if they have such a small GDP? Well they're smaller countries but so I'll give you the numbers. But I'm saying comparatively too. So Mississippi is about per capita GDP is about 47,000. I think Britain is 46,000. So I mean they're okay but by way, France is even lower. Standard of living is lower. That's the big difference.

The standard. That's something I noticed when I was living here. Think about it. Look at an average house size. Look at the number of rooms air conditioned. Look at the number of cars on average. The size of the showers in your time. When I was living in Spain, I noticed that.

That there was just an acceptance of a lower standard of living. Not to insult it, like I thought it was really enjoyable, I had a great fucking time living there, but it wasn't the same, like just assuming your apartment is AC is an American thing. Right. We're just used to- Assuming everybody has a flat screen. Exactly. Now here's an interesting question though, which is, I leave, I throw it out to all of

you. The Europeans, particularly in the North, where the incomes are a bit higher and they have really good government and works well, they find that they actually, the quality of life in terms of happiness, they score much better than we do. But who's doing those tests? It's self-reporting.

In other words, are you happy with your life? So my question is, do you think you're always gonna be happier if you're making more money? That is a misconception. No, this is my concern, is that we're talking about consumerism in America and obviously our wages have gone up, but is it possible that that is indicative of an empire in decline? That in previous generations you were guaranteed a job and now we're guaranteed stuff and low

prices is sort of the promise to my generation. And I wonder if as we become this consumption machine, that could be potentially lose our leverage on a global scale. Well, the part that resonates with me is, and you guys are talking about going to the middle of the country. The thing I noticed when I traveled,

cause I wrote a book where I tried to deal with some of these issues. So what you notice is there are places where the factory went away, but people still have jobs. Look, unemployment in America right now is at a 50-year low, and it's been at roughly that low for five or six years. It's not a Trump versus Biden thing. But what has gone away is the community.

You know, because if everybody in a Midwestern town would work for the steel factory, they'd all go to church together. They'd all be members of the Kiwanis Club. They'd all go to the movies together. They'd all go to the hardware store together. There's an identity wrapped in it. And that's it.

It's like a community and a sense of belonging and purpose. And that has gone away. But a lot of it is not globalization. The movie theater went away because of Netflix. The hardware store went away because of Home Depot. The factory may have gone away because of globalization. But it's a combination of these forces of modernity that are eroding these community structures that we have.

And that's a tough one. We're a tribal species, so that does make sense. All right, guys, let's shout out some dates. August 1st and 2nd, Kansas City, Missouri. August 8th and 9th, Perrysburg, Ohio. That's Toledo, I believe. August 22nd and 23rd, Liberty Township, Ohio. It's a lot of Ohio.

September 11th and 13th, I'm back in civilization in Donny Beach, Florida. September 25th and 26th I'm back in civilization in Donny Beach, Florida. September 25th and 26th back to Helen, Ohio. And this is a show that's I'm very excited to do it but it's gonna sell out October 5th Dubai Comedy Festival. I didn't get to go last year was a big mix up this year I'm there the tickets are already like 80% sold out so you need to hurry up and buy those. All those dates and more at AkashSingh.com. Get your tickets.

Also, I am very excited to announce the Akash Singh show. This is my podcast. I flew out to India to record a bunch of episodes because of everything that is happening with free speech over there, court cases with friends of mine being threatened with jail time. Honestly, I'm not sure how many episodes I can put out because lawyers have been calling me left and right and my friends' lives are in danger, but we are still going to put out a bunch of great episodes with people that I'm excited to talk to.

So it's on my YouTube at Akash Singh Comedy. Please check it out. I love y'all. Thank you guys so much. Chandler, Arizona, San Diego, Burlington, Vermont, Montreal, Toronto, Berkeley, Detroit, a bunch of other dates getting at it. I can't wait to see you guys at the show.

I'll be doing one hour of stand-up comedy, that. I can't wait to see you guys at the show. I'll be doing one hour stand-up comedy that no more no less. See you guys at the show. So here's my question. Let's assume that we did embrace the future and that we have, you know, succeeded better than any other country in the world at embracing the future. We at the end of the day are primal animals. Yeah. There must be a cost to embracing the future and outsourcing a lot of these industries. And I've heard a lot of people talk about this and the cost of that might be like, hey, to build a submarine in America might be a little tricky. To build a fighter jet might be a little tricky. We've got to get these parts that they only make

in China. So now potentially we're getting parts for our submarines from a country that might not want us to build the best submarines. Can you explain, like, what would be your steel man argument for the downside of converting into a consumption economy? Like, give me, like, it can be fear based, but like, just give me what the realistic concerns are of that. So I think that is the realistic concern. My view, the realistic concern is not like we should be making everything in America.

We can't. Like, we're, you know, the margins on making a car, you know. The capitalist system won't incentivize it. Right. I mean, it's just like they've done the math. It would cost $3,500 to make an iPhone in America. Right. So that's like more than twice as expensive.

But the national security argument, I think, is real, that there are some core areas where you don't want to be dependent on countries that maybe your geopolitical adversaries may not have your best interests at heart. But that's why I come back to our allies, our ecosystem. So the truth is, we don't need to make all the steel in the world right here in America. But if the Canadians are making it, if the Europeans are making it, we built a defensive and we protect them, right? So that's why I feel like the turning on our friends is the worst idea. I'll give you an example.

Computer chips is the, you know, everybody understands this is like the holy grail of the modern world. So the company that makes, that does the X-ray lithography that actually makes the chips, you know, that puts the transistors on the chips, which is now down with so, there's so many billions of transistors on each little chip that basically can only be done by an X-ray machine. That X-ray machine is only made by one company in the world. It's ASML. It is the most advanced piece of equipment probably we make in the world. It has 400,000 parts.

It costs three to $400 million. You need three Boeing 747s to transport it. And the temperature inside that machine is five times the surface of the sun. That machine is only made by one company. It has a 95% market share. It's not an American company, it's a Dutch company. But because it's part of our ecosystem.

We have access to it. And we tell it, don't sell to the Chinese, they don't sell to the Chinese. We tell it, don't sell to the Russians, they don't sell to the Russians. So we can't make everything ourselves, but if we were to embrace our friends, and that's what, like as I say,

nobody else has this kind of relationship. So this is really interesting, right? And I think this is something that I don't begrudge the average American for not knowing because like I don't know it you know the importance of these relationships in your house you can outsource certain things that you used to do in your country to other countries that you are allied with but is it possible that some of the things that we are outsourcing are not to our allies are there certain things that we are reliant on to our adversaries? Yes, we are. And we should be changing that. That's 100%. And then should we subsidize those things with the government if there isn't a capitalist market that will support

them? Like, what is something that we are reliant on our adversaries? Like pharmaceuticals, for example. I think we get a lot of them from China. So the best example would be these rare earths. You've probably heard about them. Greenland. Right. The most important thing to understand about rare earths

is they're not rare. They're called rare, but they're actually widely available. The processing of rare earth to turn it into the magnets that we need is what is a very complicated energy intensive and dirty process, environmentally extremely dirty, like massive pollution of air and water when you do it. We decided we didn't want to do that because, for all those reasons. So we can try and bring it back and I think we should come up with some strategy. But keep in mind, you're going to have a really hard time finding an American community that says, yeah, okay, it's okay in my backyard, right?

Like everyone wants it in theory, but then you try to find a place in America. And again, my point would be, why not talk to the Indians? That's a much larger issue that you're talking about. But India is a poor country. It is willing to put up with a trade off that we are not willing to put up with. Why not talk to some- Environmental trade off, you're saying. Right, right.

And look, because they already have a lot of pollution. They still have huge coal plants. But it is a real problem. But I would keep that list small because the danger is here. You can kind of imagine every problem needing to be then made in America and then you're spending hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing all these industries. Keep the list small, make it strategic, and show yourself what are the areas where you can find friendly countries that would be willing to do it. Where is that happening, the production of these big

magnets? The rarest stuff is almost all in China. The Chinese made a strategic decision to do it. And I mean I know it sounds like, like why do you use the rare earth magnets for? So you know in a car seat today, you can make like 17 different adjustments. Those are all rare earth magnets that are doing it. Now you could say to yourself, do we wanna go back, could we go back to the old car seat?

Probably, but we've gotten used to a lot of stuff like that. What about like, what about making a submarine? What about making, I was speaking to the guys on the All-In pod and they said that we just didn't have the production line capabilities in America at this point. How do we generate that? Correct. Some of it I think will be very, very hard to do because it's, you know, these are a series of low-end energy intensive, often dirty,

you know, manufacturing processes that, you know, the markets are efficient, they went away for a reason. And bringing them all back together will be very hard. Creating an ecosystem where they're done, you know, with a group of countries is gonna be much easier. What we could do, first of all, actually nobody manufactures a submarine. You know, these

things are made in 10 countries, they're assembled. Even when people say the iPhone is made in China, it's not. It's made in 16 countries. It's assembled in China. And that is all the low end stuff. The high end stuff is all done in California. So we've got to be savvy about understanding that. Like we want to be involved in the critical parts that are the most important, the most value added and the other stuff if it's national security importance, our friends could do. I think that the idea that we can, you can judge me by this prediction, the idea that we're going to be able to bring back these entire supply chains into the United States is completely unrealistic.

The one thing I can guarantee you is that Trump is not going to produce a massive manufacturing revival in this country. That number of, you know, 8% of Americans being involved is not going to go to 15. I bet my life on that. So then what would be your plan for revival of middle America economically? I mean mean historically what we've done is we run the economy fast and innovative and and then we redistribute and we find smile and part of what we haven't done over the last

30 or 40 years is redistribute where the great worker retraining programs where the great apprenticeship programs where the great technical schools training you know plumbers and engineers and people who maybe don't have a college degree but want to make good money. And by the way, you can make very good money in many of those kinds of areas. But we need to scale up all of that. And what's really, I mean, the thing I really worry about, we're talking about reviving, you know, the 1950s economy. What's really about to hit us is AI.

AI is going to be, you know, what we're going to have to do is have a serious conversation about what do all of us do? I mean, you guys are probably fine. Who knows? I was thinking about this because like the next election will probably be decided, you know how the past elections like Obama was like the Twitter president and maybe this last election was Trump is TikTok or whatever. And the next one will probably be AI. And what I was really curious about with JD specifically is because he comes from an area of the country that was ravaged by outsourcing. Right? Like Appalachian, Ohio,

I think they give these like grants, these Appalachian grants, where I think you just need to pass college, like high school, and you get free college anywhere. Yep. Right? So I'm really curious, like I actually just like to hear you say, but like how do you make sure that doesn't happen

all over the country? You've witnessed what happens when we leave them a section behind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it won't be just Appalachia. This will be like major parts of the country. Look, I mean, it's the thing. Isn't there like any like predictive planning that we can do for this?

Like if we know what industries are going to be impacted, like why don't we start leaning into that transition before, not after? And part of it is this is all happening so fast and nobody knows exactly what's gonna happen But I think your intuition I think is right like you look at what the sea of Microsoft says 30% of the code in Microsoft is now written by AI. Oh dude, right? So now there was a like you say to yourself, okay, I don't need to be I you know I want to bring genius to understand that that probably means you need 30% fewer programmers, right?

And you can always justify it by saying my obligation is to the shareholders. Right. So this increases the share price, so we lay off 30% of our staff. Well, and by the way, they are in a competitive environment where if they don't do it, somebody is going to do it. That's true. Right? So think about lawyers.

What do young lawyers do when they come on? They do what they call discovery or draft writing of appeals, of court appeals. These are all easy things for AI to do. David Solomon at Goldman Sachs said that the prospectuses that the investment bankers do, they used to take weeks and weeks. The AI does in two or three hours. This is something that came out recently from the Harvard BS reunion. A few weekends ago this happened, like the hardest business school. Didn't you go to Harvard? I went to Harvard, but I got a PhD.

That's why I don't own this podcast. I'm just a guest on it. 57% of Microsoft's software code was written by AI in its most recent quarter. Coca-Cola used AI for the design of 100% of its upcoming holiday marketing campaign. Salesforce is able to handle close to 85% of its customer service related inquiries with AI tools. The CTO of Moderna was recently appointed to the additional role of the head of HR. The three, I guess, broad employee groups predicted to be most likely impacted by AI reside

within software, financial services, and professional services. JP Morgan expects 80% of its credit underwriting process to soon be handled by AI. 80% of a bank is gonna get rid of 80% of its workforce. So here's the sweet irony here, which may be only true temporarily, but the data currently is that computer science majors just graduating have a higher unemployment rate than art history majors.

Wow. That's funny. Which is kind of sweet. It probably won't last, but the reason is probably so many people went into computer science thinking this is the sure thing and AI does programming really well because so many are going into coding, etc. Remember the whole learn to code trend. Yes, you remember this?

When people are telling truckers like, oh, just learn to code. And now it's like, yeah, coders learn to truck. Yeah. Well, this is actually, to answer what you were talking about earlier, there was one candidate talking about this six, seven years ago, and nobody cared

because we're all going to need a UBI. I don't see a way around needing universal basic income. Andrew Yang said it, we all laughed at him. We all thought he was a fucking idiot. And I think, and we as people are just so concerned with the problems right in front of us, we're not even thinking about the problems five, 10 years down the road. So let me ask you, what do you guys think about this? So my problem with UBI has always been, I think that human beings need not just money, but dignity. I understand it.

I agree. And so that's one of the reasons that sounds super wonky. I've always preferred something that's called the earned income tax credit, which just to put it in simple language, what it says is we already have it. If you work a full-time job and you don't hit the, what you make is less than the poverty level, the government pops up your wages. I agree. And I think we should double that or triple that. hit the, what you make is less than the poverty level, the government tops up your wages. And I think we should double that or triple that.

We've been doing it with Walmart for years. Why not do it forever? Here's my- And, but the question is, I mean, that's expensive and that's gonna, you know, you're gonna need a lot of money to do, and even there I worry, like, is there work for people to do in the world? That's my question.

You were just describing, Andrew, where like 80% of the work is still done by AI. What do these guys, people do? So I'm not saying UBI is a solution to all of our problems, but again, when 80% of jobs become unnecessary, fairly, much quicker than we think, what are we gonna do for those 80% of people? It's not like just figure it out.

What do you think people, what would people do in the day? Don't you think they'll feel like? I can't answer the, no, I don't think we'll be happy. But I do think there's an immediate need, which is a lot of people are probably going to be unemployed soon, and we need something to at least satisfy their survival needs. There'll just be more services. I think when people aren't doing things, they're not just sitting around, there are just going to be more forms of distraction.

I think one of the- We'll give each other massages. Exactly. The second time you ask about massages. We're too close to Chinatown for you to be talking. We'll give each other massages. Exactly. The second time you ask about massages. We're too close to Chinatown for you to be talking. Robots will do that better than you do it, don't worry. There's an interesting phenomena I think happening right now where you see a lot of people that

are not necessarily poor actually making really good money. Let's say you're in the 90 to 120,000 range. The amount of money when I was growing's say you're in like the 90 to like 120,000 range. Like the amount of money when I was growing up, you're fucking rich. Like that's what I thought. And, but I think what they're experiencing right now is because of crippling college debt, they don't really feel an exit stretch. Right? So they're stuck in this like extended adolescence, right? Where they're they have their flat screens, they're going to parties with their friends, they're enjoying things, but they don't really feel like they'll be able to buy a house or

buy an apartment or maybe even start a family. There's this like real delayed adulthood. And I think that's where you're feeling a lot of frustration. I think that's like where the mumdonies start to come in and they have a lot of success where like the democratic socialists are really pushing. It's not for the very poor people. When you saw poor people in New York, they voted for Cuomo pretty much, right? It's the kind of like middle class that doesn't feel like they have escape velocity or escape opportunity. And now they're like, well, I need, I deserve. It's almost like this like a little bit of entitlement that poor people don't have.

They're like, I deserve to have a house And a family and to be super rich, but my loans won't let me do that I totally agree so if you look at the three areas of American life where Costs have gone up way faster than inflation. It's education Healthcare and housing and those are the three things that those people who I think you put it exactly right They feel like wait a minute wasn't I promised this? Wasn't I told work hard, take all the tests, go to a good college?

And the irony here is all three of those areas, you have massive market distortions caused by weird government involvement, weird oligopolies around hospitals. So it's like the market actually doesn't work. If you were to- You're not letting the market work. Right, if you were to, I mean, look at Texas. Not my favorite state for a lot of things, but for housing, they do phenomenally.

They barely have a homelessness problem because of that, because they don't have all this restrictive zoning and regulation. Maybe we could learn something from that. Well this is what I'm optimistic with AI for is that it could be the case that AI disrupts you know employment and there's massive unemployment but it could also be the case that it massively increases worker productivity and drives prices down right like is that not also the case. Totally. We're talking about education like the cost of education obviously it's inflated for a myriad of reasons

But if they're able to democratize education where it's largely free due to AI models They're able to teach kids then is it possible that the cost of those things could go down and then you don't have these massive Kinds of jobs sure like is it possible that could also be the case that's what the techno optimists say and I think you got to say For most of history they've been right. I's what the techno optimists say. And I think you've got to say, for most of history, they've been right. I just worry the speed and scale of this. I mean, this is so big. And secondly, if you look at history,

there were periods of like 60 years where book average GDP didn't go up. Like eventually, things worked out. But that's like a long period. Yeah, a long term maybe. I think short term of a CEO is saying, I could make increased profits at however many X multiplier

by laying off this percent of my workforce. But what if they can make the same profits as like, like think like a wealth manager. It's like, I don't take clients under a hundred thousand dollars because it's not worth the time. But now you can take on thousands of clients under a hundred thousand dollars because you have this AI model that does the same amount

of time and now you're able to increase your margins. That's very smart. I think that, you know, we're going to, that's why I say we don't know what's going to happen. But it's important to hear that side as well, because it's easy for us to get caught up in like the fear, like doom spiral, right? But this idea that AI is... You can see the jobs you're losing. You can't see the jobs of the future that are being created. And it's going to be a battle between the two.

No, I was just saying, I think corporations are going to benefit the most because they have the money to invest in AI right now and a lot of other places don't and like education is one of the places that I don't see them really investing in AI that much. Like in terms of... Yeah, why would an institution invest in an AI education software if it's going to stop students from spending $100,000 a year for going to do like keg stands for four years. That's what we did in college.

Like, I don't think any of us really learned that much in college. It was a fun experience. I would say the same thing. I didn't even speak for yourself. I was a scholarship kid from India. We didn't all have Indian parents. I had to maintain a GPA. But I would say that's the same reason why all these online programs have exploded, right?

In terms of Harvard undergrad is a few thousand, then their online program is tens of thousands. Wow. So these online programs are able to then spread it out, they're able to gain smaller margins or less cost, but for way more people. And so in that vein, I'm like, why would they not do the same thing for AI? I'd be like, everyone can get an AI degree from our school. But then are we going to be like Cuba where everyone has a degree but there's no jobs? Well, this is what's kind of happening now, right? We are already like Cuba without realizing

it. We're like Cuba, now we're just stacked with debt. So Cuba just doesn't have the opportunity but they have the education. Now you have this circumstance where going to an Ivy League institution like you went to, two fine institutions, I would imagine, you tell me if I'm wrong here, but the greatest benefit was being around other people and increasing your network. You don't get that going to Ole Miss. You don't get that going to UC Santa Barbara, like me. I met great friends, I'm friends to this day, and it's amazing. And a beautiful place. It's incredible.

It was awesome. I've spoken there. It's amazing. I'm telling myself, I gotta find a way to get a gig here. Enjoy that. You shouldn't be educated that way. But when you go to Harvard, you go to Yale, and you're sitting down with future presidents

or future senators and future head front managers and all these other people, your book, right? Like the people that you can call to access information or call to for help for your future projects. It's like invaluable. 100% right. And it actually points to maybe an area where AI can't disintermediate, which is the physical networking that takes place among human beings that is still requires you know conferences and meetings and things like that like

because ultimately human beings are social and you can't get it you know you can't somehow do everything automatically without without meeting without you know trusting like something like I think, becomes even more important in a world of deep fakes and AI. So it's going to be very interesting to think about, when you have a technological push that moves you in this direction, where they can do kind of everything analytic

that you can do better, maybe we start to emphasize those qualities of human beings, which are not about analytics, which are about our emotions, our ability to trust, our ability, EQ, character, exactly. And maybe that's not such a bad thing. Great thing. Right? Like that actually, that's what is fundamentally human about us, our ability to be brave and

wise and loving and emotionally support other people. Maybe that's where we're headed. Yeah, you're saying we'll just become France. I don't think of the French as emotionally very supportive. We'll take a doctor, right? Like a doctor that used to be the whole idea of the doctor was used as a brainiac who could diagnose what was going on. You'd ask you a few questions.

Well, I mean, the AI can diagnose way better than the smartest doctor in the world because the AI knows like 40 million cases. Well, how many doctors can remember 40 million? But maybe what the doctor's skills then become is talking to the patient, relating, helping you understand your condition, helping you make the kind of lifestyle changes that you need to make in order to be successful on this path of recovery. That's a skill they don't teach in medical school. It's all brainiac, brainiac, brainiac.

That's nursing school. Exactly. No, that's right. And it's, and, but maybe we need to reverse the order and say, you know what, bedside manner, emotional support, being a life coach is a core part of being a doctor. Not just being this guy who I'm like a genius and I know how to do this. Yeah. I mean, that'd be great. I hope that happens. All right guys, stay at break for a second. Listen, today's sponsor is Kraken, your go-to for everything investing across crypto and stocks.

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Healthcare is the toughest one because every, let's start by saying every country, every advanced country in the world, healthcare is a problem because there are two or three fundamental problems with the healthcare which I think it makes the market not work really well. Number one, you go to a showroom and the salesman says to you, you should buy this flat screen TV. It's really cool and it's really good and it's twice as expensive than anything else. You're going to say, let me think about it.

I don't know. I don't. A doctor tells you, you need to get this test. You're going to get the test. There's an asymmetry of information. You can't bargain hunt for the best medical procedure or even whether you don't even know whether you need that medical procedure. You don't want to haggle with your doctor. We get three times as many MRIs as people in Germany do.

We don't need them three times as many MRIs. We get them because the system is incentivizing to create that. Secondly, I think that there is a fundamental problem here, which is that the market's incentive is to have you be sick, need a medicine, and not die, right? Like if you have diabetes, that's perfect for the market. Because you're gonna be on that for the rest of your life. Yeah. Whereas the best thing for health

is for you to be, for prevention, for you to never, you know that. But why will the healthcare system, why does it have any incentive to prevent problems? Because they make money by having you sick and then solving the problem, right? So it's an interesting kind of market failure, like and that's where I think you need the government. And we don't do government that well.

If you look at Singapore and Taiwan and South Korea, where they have good healthcare systems, which are very low cost, it's because they do government really well. They also have a lot of faith in their government. I think that in the inception of America, it's baked it to resent, to fight back. It's decentralized. It's inherently fragmented. And we're anti-state by, you know, by like get the government off my back. Exactly.

Do you think we can pull off universal health care? Look, Medicare is basically universal health care. We've pulled it off pretty well. You know, I think that the fantasy we have is that nobody is making these decisions. Remember when Obama was being touted and they were like, that'll be death panels, seropel. Well, we already have death panels, they're insurance companies. I mean, the insurance company decides whether or not this procedure is okay or not. Maybe it would be better to have some centralized group of experts who decide, look, if you want this, God bless you, but we're not going to pay for it because we don't think

it's medically necessary. That's what most of these other countries have. There's an interesting thing. So Shifty is one of the guys who works with us. He's our editor. I want everybody out back home to go wish Shifty a healthy recovery. He just had hip surgeries, like 20, how old is Shifty?

22, 23. 22, 23 years old. And, but what's quite interesting is he had health insurance, but navigating the claim process was, is like virtually impossible, right? So what Shifty did, and this is to Mark's point earlier, is he just input everything in ChatGPT. And his insurance paid for it.

He goes, I would never have been able to do this alone. I would have to hire, I think they're called like a health advocate or something like that. But he had AI do it for him. So in the same way that like you see on Twitter, somebody posts on my crazy fake news headline, and then Grok immediately, or people ask Grok to, is this true? Verify this, yeah, yeah.

Grok verifies it. Like, Twitter is so much more enjoyable for me now that I'm not consuming all this rage bait without having a fact check on it. Maybe that starts to happen with the healthcare companies and then they have to find a different system because you can't take advantage of the people now that we have an AI tool that's going to essentially fight back on their, I don't know if it's bureaucracy. Reverse incentive. Yeah, they're reverse incentive.

No, you might be, you might, I think this may be an area where AI really helps because navigating the complexity of the healthcare system or of taxes. That's what I was going to say. All these systems that seem like so daunting to us, now we have something on our side, on our side, that can at least help us through it. And maybe my parents' generation won't be able to do it, but in order for me to help my parents, it'd be easy. I'm throwing in Chachi B.T. It's kind of like, you know how like the robber barons come about and then unions are like this equal and opposite

force to the robber baron who's taking advantage of the worker. It's like maybe we start to use chat GBT as this equal and opposite force to the, what do you call that? The like the muck that you have to go through. Economic bureaucracy? The economic bureaucracy or administrative bureaucracy that you have to go through trying to get your claim. You know, but it's a very interesting thing to ask yourself why we do this? Why do we have so much of this? And it's true for Medicaid, it's true for food stamps, it's true for... and there's a very good article by in the Atlantic by this woman Annie Lowry who says what we do is we put a time tax, you know, and it's particularly felt by the poor because we're so worried that somebody who doesn't deserve the benefits is going to get it, that we put so many requirements and you know, and by the way, this new big, beautiful bill

has added a huge number of them with regard to Medicaid and work and this, that, that, you know, you make it impossible for somebody to, and to go through it. And it takes so much of their time. And these are people who work, you know, real nine to five jobs where they're being clocked. It's not like, frankly, all of us who can take an hour off in the middle of the day and do stuff, right? And so it's a very cruel thing to do to poor people where they're poor, they don't have many resources. And now you put this huge burden where they have to navigate this whole process. Maybe AI can help, but I really wish we would rethink that and ask ourselves, like,

you know, the thing about something like UBI, and by the way, all the data has shown that when you give benefits like this, it's much better. Just give people money. They're not stupid. You know, if you're giving them a benefit, don't make them jump through 16 hoops to prove this and prove that and prove that. You know, you're going to catch 1% fraud, but 99% of You know, you're gonna catch 1% fraud, but 99% of the people, you've made their lives miserable.

Yeah, I don't think we think their intentions are to help people with these rules. I think we think their intentions are to not pay you. And that's why we don't trust them. And that was kind of my thing with Obamacare. It still gets touted a lot, but to me it was like, maybe it's better than what we have, but I don't think the solution is to give everybody

health insurance When we all know insurance companies are inherently pretty terrible. Yeah, the one thing about Obamacare I thought that was pretty awesome was the pre-existing conditions Yeah, like talk to anybody who had pre-existing conditions like before I'll bomb a care. They were gonna die Yeah, yeah, they were just gonna die. I'm never gonna get and like talk to Republicans They had pre-existing conditions like coal miners like people who work in factories and shit That Obama came here came around and saved their fucking lives I'm not saying they're gonna change the way they vote

But like Obama has a special place in a lot of Republicans hearts because of that Look the basic thing Obama kept tried to fix and it only got some ways you can't have a functioning insurance system where everybody doesn't buy in Think about car insurance if you said, all the people who are not going to get into accidents, you don't have to buy the insuring. But they're the people who make the system work. Like, insurance workers, because a whole bunch of people who don't need it also buy it, because they

pay for the people who are in balance. They balance it out. So in health care, when you say young people don't need to buy you know You can't do that like the only systems that work that are real insurance systems Everyone has to buy like house insurance you you know, if you don't have some minimum number of people all buying in It's not going to work. That kind of is like a universal health Thing in that essentially like I pay full price for health insurance Which for my wife means like twenty like $2,500 a month

for not that good of coverage, it's fine. But that's kind of like a tax I pay. Right, exactly, exactly. I just wish we could remove the insurance company. I don't mind paying a tax. Not that the government's gonna be that much better at it, but at least I don't think their intentions are to not pay, which I think that is the case with insurance companies.

I think now we're getting to the point where it's like, what is the American criticism of like the Canadian health care service or like the British health care service? The health care is not as good. It's not as good, you're waiting on lines, you can't get a doctor visit. It's like, we're waiting on lines, it's not as good, you can't get a doctor visit. You can either charge us and offer something spectacular or you don't charge us and offer something adequate. You can't offer something adequate and charge us

That's where I think people start to revolt Oh, and I think that's where the insurance companies have kind of because of their incentive structures have like squeezed us Yeah, and you're we're at the point where like I'm not justifying this but you have a guy shoot a healthcare CEO and then kind Of be like celebrated on the internet. Like if that's not indicative of how Americans feel about our healthcare system. You're not justifying it. I will say this, you know, all of this points to this one of a problem we have in America,

which is when we don't want the government to be involved in something, but it kind of has to be involved in something, but it kind of has to be involved in it. We end up devising the most complicated Rube Goldberg type system that is totally inefficient. And that's what we have with healthcare. If you look at so many of the tax credits we have in America, we don't want to say, we want the government to give you this money. So we're like, the government will give you a tax credit where you can, basically the government is giving you money. But you've created this complicated system where the lawyers are going to get a piece,

the accountants are going to get the piece, a consultant is going to, why not just say we're subsidizing this? We're writing you a check. So there's something like that. Then we're a socialist country. Exactly. So we have $1 trillion of government expenditures that are tax credits. Think about that. So we're already given a trillion.

But because our egos are tied into democracy and socialism and capitalism are so horrendous, we have to disguise it as something else. Is this buy-in system you're describing why we couldn't have like a dualistic sort of like public health care program as well as a private health care program? That's what I was wondering. I think that's what we should have. I mean, my own view would be have a basic system that's like a very bare bones Medicare for all. And you can layer on top of it a gold plated system

that you want to pay more in. Public school, private school. The problem is how do you get from here to there? So Clinton tried to get rid of the insurance companies. That was the end and that they revolted. And then they Clinton tried to get rid of the insurance companies. And they revolted. And then they said that he got head in the Oval Office. There was a lot from the insurance lawyers.

You see the propaganda that they throw at our heroes? What the hell is going on here? They said that he was on Epstein's Island. Just because he tried to get rid of the insurance companies. Hey, last guy to balance the federal budget. Maybe whatever he was doing it was working. Now we're talking! Feed on the interns! I want to be clear I'm disassociating myself from that comment. Okay that's interesting how was he able to balance the

budget did he just kind of let Wall Street run wild? Was that the idea? No, here's the magical, crazy, Nobel-winning idea that he had. He raised taxes and he cut spending. You've got to do both. Crazy! What an insane idea! It's math, right? I mean, that's the only way when you've

got huge deficits like this. Obviously, you've got to do both. And what we did was we cut back at taxes and we sort of cut spending a little bit, but we raised it in so many different areas. You got to win an election and you can't win an election saying I'm going to raise taxes. You just can't. People are going to be like, fuck that. Trump won already.

No, but he didn't say I'm going to raise taxes. But Clinton won in 96 after he had raised taxes. Oh no, yeah, and I remember my parents, my dad lost his job in 91 for like two years and then 93, he opened a business and like, I remember being like, yo, I feel like it's not just me, I feel like we're all kind of doing really well. And then 96, I think it was just, the momentum was crazy from the economy. But you know, your point about your dad losing the job, you know, reminds me of something you brought up, which is when you have this much change, you know, what do we expect and

what we should have realized and that you're going to get a backlash, you're going to get a lot of anxiety because this much change, I mean, think about the amount of change we've had globalization, okay, then information revolution, software, internet, mobile, cultural change, think about how much the culture has changed in the last 30 years, the role of women, role of minorities, role of sexual minorities, all that stuff has exploded. Sexual what? Sexual minorities, gays, lesbians coming into the mainstream. You would think of more sex. Yeah. No.

Well, it wasn't sexual, Latinas. It wasn't sexual. No. Sexual. I don't know. Was it the massage we were talking about? Was it the massage or something? Ironically, the role of sexual minorities is going up,

but apparently young people are having less sex. I know. What the hell? Because they keep talking about it. We need a sexual majority. That's what we need. My point is, like, you have that much change, you're going to get a backlash. You're going to have people say, wait, my world is disappearing. Yes.

And I think a lot of the Trump phenomenon is it's actually not that economic. It's this cultural. And I don't mean cultural in a racist sense. Just like my world is disappearing. My community went away. Give me back those. That's why the most important words on his cap are again, make America great again. So it's a politics of nostalgia.

Let me go back to when all this crazy change wasn't happening. I thought that this was something that was idiosyncratic to the United States of America. I'm on a boat in Ibiza, that is a very privileged sentence and I'm very proud to say it. I'm on a boat in Ibiza and I'm talking to the captain of the boat, right? And there was a captain like a first like helper or something like that. And I was like, so what's going on in Spain? Like, tell me like what's happening. You know, I saw there's some protests in Barcelona and he gets comfortable enough at first he's kind of like nervous to share and then he gets kind of comfortable and he's like, honestly, yeah, it's like,

you know, the immigration and like the, you know, the left wing government is just kind of letting all these Moroccans in, you know, at the front of the boat, is one of my best friends who's Moroccan, he's just enjoying his life. And I'm like, yeah, he's one of them. And he stops the boat, falls off.

But he's like, he's like, again, as Moroccans are coming in, they let them come in because when they're naturalized, they can vote and it bolsters the support of the less one side. And he's essentially like echoing the talking points that you hear so many Americans talking about. So have you heard about this phenomenon? Like why do we think there is, there seems to be this huge frustration in not just America, and I guess you're feeling it in Europe, and you could say a blame of the immigrants that are coming in,

and a reluctance for maybe the government to place that blame, but the people seem to feel it. Can you speak on this? Is there, if we were to make the argument for it, what would it be? What would the argument against it? Like, can we just speak on it intellectually, not like what we personally feel? What is that sentiment?

Right. So you're first of all, you're 100% right. Right-wing populism is happening all over the Western world, right? And it's important again to notice it's happening in places that like don't have huge amounts of inequality, like Northern Europe. Sweden is like one of the more egalitarian places in the world. They've got a very strong right-wing populist party. The Dutch have a big welfare state. They've got right-wing populism. France coddles its workers more than anyone else. I can tell you, when I was at Newsweek, I tried to get rid of one person in our Paris

office, basically had to shut down the whole office. It was crazy. And they have right-wing populists. They have a very strong party. In fact, it's the most likely to win right now if the elections were held. And all of them, the rocket fuel is immigration. So I think it's two things. One, we let too many people in too fast over the last several years. The US in 1975 was 5% foreign born, we're now 15% foreign born. Sweden in 1975 was probably 2% foreign born, it's now 22% foreign born. So it's like, and

that's not even a country with a strong tradition of immigration, right? So these places just like too many people in, there's only so much you can assimilate, there's only so much you can accept. It's interesting because you are historically very pro-immigration. I am totally pro-immigration. And I think that it is the distinctive thing that makes America tick is like these people coming in who are hardworking, driven.

I don't even think it matters that they're the world's smartest. I think having somebody who's willing to try to cross the Rio Grande three times to come and wash your dishes and look after your kids, that person has drive and determination But there is a reality numbers matter like you know, how many people can a society digest? So I think a you know, we've been and and the left got that wrong. This is the nuance lost in the conversation I think yeah

But numbers matter and too. And the speed matters. And the second piece of it is, I think immigration also becomes a kind of symbol for all these changes that we're talking about, right? Because how do you visualize fast movement of capital around the world, fast movement of goods? How do you visualize the computer software program that got rid of a whole bunch of jobs? These are all abstractions. But the guy who moved into that town and he speaks a different language and he worships

different gods and he looks different, that's a very traditional human reaction to say, you know, that's change and that's change. So some of it is the immigrant becomes the stand-in for all these changes that are happening to your world and you don't know how to put your finger on them, but boy, you can look at that guy and say, that's the problem. But what's interesting is they're not necessarily wrong to say that there is a fundamental change. Maybe they're getting too much of the credit for the change because it's the easiest thing to put your finger on. I love

that. But this idea that a country could go from 2% to 22% foreign born, that's going to cause some friction and there are going to be some changes there. And then what we do is we gaslight those people and go, ah, you're just racist and you're big. Some of them might be racist, but there might be others who are just like, hey, this feels different and we're not adjusting to this. And especially in Europe where there are like thousand year old cultures. In America, at least in New York, like- Everybody came from somewhere. All of our parents are immigrants, right?

Everybody came from somewhere. Everybody kept talking about like the immigrants in New York. I'm going to be completely honest, maybe it's the neighborhood or whatever, like I didn't even notice, but they like, everybody looks kind of like they just got here. Maybe it's the neighborhood or whatever like I didn't even notice Like they just got here by the way, that's true in general the places that are most worried about immigrants like, you know, Montana They don't have a lot of places that have the immigrants. They're like we're cool Well, you know we're fine. Good. So Your earlier point speed and you know that they're just like normal people. They're trying their best They're not you know threatened to destroy America.

I also think to your earlier point, it doesn't feel jarring to us, like it doesn't feel like our world is changing, because you're in New York, you've always been used to seeing immigrants. So it doesn't feel like it's changing when there's more, you don't even notice. And you're used to change, New Yorkers are rapidly changing. You point out that Europe is so good, like what do we like about Europe when we visit, right? As soon as French, it's Italian, when we visit? That shit is French. It's Italian. We're going there for that experience. You go into the village and it looks like everybody's been the same.

Baker looks the same and he looks like his grandfather was the baker. But imagine the new guy from Morocco. Where is he going to fit in? You wouldn't worry about that for a minute in America. That's why I think we shouldn't give up not just immigration, the, not just immigration, but the pride we have in it, because we do it really well. We assimilate people really well in this country. Look, I'm an immigrant, you know, as you said,

we're all in some way connected, but I am an immigrant. I grew up in India. We got that Islam out of you immediately. You can. You can. No, I mean, you try. I can tell you. Convert them.

I can tell you, this country is the, it's, there's no question. It is more welcoming. It allows people to find their own place in it. When I became Ronald Reagan was president and he said he had a line which I loved. He said in America, we don't care about your origins. We care about your destination. Fire. And that's a great line.

Love it. And that is the way we should think about it. So what is the rate, do you think? And it's impossible to judge right now, but if we think that there was a time where it was too few, a time where it is too much, where do we assess what is the right amount for assimilation to not have that jarring kind of culture shock and for the average American or Western person in a Western country to not place that blame because we know that will be the impulse. Like we're aware of how humans act and we have to kind of, we can't tell humans not

to be human, right? Right. Because we'll fail every single time at that. So how do we figure out what that rate for immigration is that makes the people coming in feel welcomed, which is what you want, and gives them an opportunity to assimilate? So how do we figure out what that rate for immigration is that makes the people coming in feel welcomed, which is what you want, and gives them an opportunity to assimilate? Like if you're coming into a place that's 22%, right? We go into Sweden and I imagine any as any immigrant you would go to a place where there's a lot of your people. You have no need to assimilate

because you're within that community. You're probably speaking that language. And then there's this chasm that begins to grow. So what do we think the rate is? So we've, the United States takes in about 1 million legal immigrants a year. We've done that for many, many years. It's never really caused a problem. You know, 350 million people in this country, 1 million. It actually helps us enormously demographically because the truth is in America, we have a demographic problem.

And if you look at the white fertility rate, it's actually much lower. It's at European levels. So basically the two things keeping America going demographically are immigration and immigrants, not just Latinas. Immigrants have more kids. So two is replacement, right? Two parents have more kids. Hey, so two is replacement, right? Two parents having two kids. It's if you have more than two that you're actually helping.

I will point out I am an Asian American immigrant. I have three kids. Oh, there you go. Boosting the average. Get them out! Get them out! So the problem became the breakdown of the asylum system. Basically people who are poor and dispossessed in places like Latin America and Central Americans,

they may be poor, they're not stupid. They realized that there was a loophole in the system. If you came to try to cross the Rio Grande and you were trying to do it, you know, without any cause, you got hunted down and thrown out. But if you came and said, I am seeking asylum because I have a credible fear of political persecution, you got a lawyer, you got two court hearings, you got to stay in the country. And so guess what? The number of asylum seekers, which used to be in the thousands, is now in the millions.

And so obviously the system is being gamed. And nobody wanted to say this. I've been saying this for a while and you can catch hell for saying it, but obviously these people are gaming the system. And nobody wanted to point this out. And I think the answer is we've got to just scrap the asylum system we have and come up with a new one. And I think the answer is we got to just scrap the asylum system we have and come up with a new one.

You know, we've got to either put limits on it or we've got to have very stringent requirements or we've got to have requirements that you can only apply from your home country. Because you know, look, we live in an age of technology now. You don't need to show up at the border. You can apply by, you know, if you have a smartphone, you would apply. So we've got to completely reconceive that. That is what broke down. If Joe Biden had just not done one thing, which was to have reversed all of those Trump bans, I think he, yeah, I think the Democrats, I don't know whether he would have had a chance to win because he did open up the gates and he

did let in millions of people. And they need to be accountable for that. Alright guys, let's talk about some UFC fights for a second. I'm very interested in this Chmaev-Duplessy fight. DDP vs Chmaev. So here's the thing, like DDP has had so much success with his very unique style. And you're even seeing guys like Stylebender and stuff just give it up. He's like he's just difficult like he comes at you he throws caution to the wind. Yeah, and like it's very hard to plan for and Chmaev is like a traditional like beautiful wrestler

traditional in terms of his striking ability, but like you're looking at a guy who's unorthodox versus wildly orthodox. Yeah. And they're just gonna clash. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. And it's, and DDP is big, so that's the thing. It's like, Chmaev is unbelievable at wrestling, but like will he be as effective

versus a guy who cuts a lot of weight and is fucking strong? Has Drake has taken on just a traditional wrestler type? We gotta look. I'm trying to think who's in the weight class that even would wrestle him. We gotta look. I mean, this is gonna be different. Like, Chimaev is, like, exceptional. Yeah. But, uh... Even just stylistically, like, I just can't imagine Duplassi would want to go to the ground with him.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to do that. So then I wonder if that makes him not approach as strong. And he only has one way of approaching. There's the other thing where it's just like, if it's worked for you your whole career, and you're beating the best guys on the planet with this style, I think these guys are so confident in their style. They're like, I'm not going to change anything for this guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I get that approach too. It's like the Tom Thibodeau approach, where it's like, this has got us to the playoffs, so I'm not gonna change anything. But sometimes you need to fucking make a change. What do you guys think? I think this, I don't know much I just think like you said it's gonna be two very diverse styles I love that idea in a fight like what wins out not giving a fuck or being the most locked in discipline from that where they Nagashtani whatever like.

I think he's guys. Oh, yeah He grew up in Sweden, but like his is I think his family came comes from Chechnya from that mistaken super discipline And then just dude watching dry kiss. It's like it doesn't make sense how he's winning It seems like he just puts his head down charges in takes whatever abuse you give him Yeah, he can't even fucking breathe and then he wins. It's like it's the craziest thing. Yeah, it made no sense Obviously, I'm watching the easy fight. We're all rooting for Izzy and watching Drake is just kind of like be relentless It's crazy. But then again with a wrestler, can he just hold him down pin him down? Whatever doesn't matter That's the other thing. Can you can you mitigate that by just keeping it on the ground?

Yeah, because he's so unpredictable in the feet that you're like I don't know if I want to get into these exchanges. And that's easy to strikers. We couldn't just take him to the ground. But if you can just take him to the ground, does that kind of take away all of his? Great point. That's what I would lean toward, but I don't know much. Oh, yeah. I don't bet against the Dagestanis. Yeah, it's hard. Well, he's Chechenian. I don't know if you knew that. Yeah. But to Americans, that's that. Yeah. If there's no mustache, I don't bet against it. If it's just beard, no mustache, then I just, yeah, I just feel like you're gonna be able

to bait him in, and he's gonna, I imagine Dragus is gonna get antsy and like just fucking go full force, especially if it goes into later rounds, and then, yeah, Tremont just takes him to the ground and fucking tackles him. What do you think, Al? Ditto, your boy, you can't go against a stand, man. Yeah, right? Even though he's not from a stand. You can't go against a stand. Yeah, Yeah, right? Even though you're not from a stand. Yeah, yeah. You can't go against the tights.

Tight shit. Tight shit. Yeah. Stake is the leader in global betting. You know, so I was looking to see those fellow top sports and political events. He's the problem-cone flagrant for your welcome bonus. Now, let's get back to the show. Based on everything you're saying, we need to ask you about Israel.

We need to ask you about Big Beautiful Build. But before that, based on everything you're saying, we can't have too many immigrants coming in too quickly. There are loopholes that get exploited. How do you feel about ending birthright citizenship? I think, look, I don't think birthright citizenship is some like, you know, hill I am willing to die on in that if you were to have a country that had some requirements based on it, like, okay, you're born in this country, but we also want to make sure X, Y, and Z, other countries have that. Yeah, European countries have that.

What I will say is because of the particular history of the United States, because of slavery and the Civil War, it is in the Constitution. And I don't think it's particularly ambiguous. It's pretty clearly written into the Constitution. And it's not an area where I would be leading the charge for a constitutional amendment. I don't think we need it. We've survived 250 years pretty well with it in there. Getting too many immigrants too quickly.

Yeah. And there's a loophole that you can come here illegally, have a kid, kid is an American. I'm not saying what I believe, but I'm asking you guys what you're saying. So what I'm saying is I would rather make sure through the processes I was saying, that you don't let the illegal immigrants in, rather than say, we're gonna try and amend the Constitution and take out something that has been pretty core

to the United States, as opposed to just strengthening the border and making sure you change the asylum. If you change the asylum, by the way, to be fair to Trump, he has shown that it's actually not so hard to stop border entry. Border entry is down to close to zero. So you don't have a problem with both rights citizenship now because you're not letting anybody in.

But why does it seem like people are so upset with the amount of immigrants here if it doesn't seem to be affecting the economy that much? Like right now... It helps the economy. Yeah, like unemployment is at record lows, and I don't really hear people complaining that they can't get a job

because some immigrant or migrant has that job that they want. I think a lot of it is cultural. I do think a lot of it is cultural. I do think a lot of it is cultural. You know, people, as we were talking about, the places that have the immigrants don't seem to mind. It's the places, you know, where do you feed the strongest anti-immigrant fervor? It literally is the places

that have the lowest number of immigrants. Where their idea of America is one without immigrants. And the places where your idea of New York is a city of immigrants So it's not a shocking for us. Yeah, I don't I don't see so Don't we have to change how they feel and look at what America is because no because America is a place where we're accepting of All different types of people we should be accepting of their view of America I think you can meet them where they are Maybe a little bit where it's like instead of you have to completely change how you think you can meet them where they are maybe a little bit, where it's like, instead of,

you have to completely change how you think, okay, we're still letting in immigrants, that is what America's founded on. Maybe we let them in a little bit slower, and you can be upset about that if you want, but we need to put this- And I'll tell you, we still, you know, we've taken a million legal. I don't think anyone has any problem with that. And honestly, as a legal immigrant, I kind of resent the fact that people who, you know, who don't stand in line and

don't do the things you're meant to do somehow get ahead of the law. I went through a very, very long, complicated, painful process to become an American citizen. We've got to vet out the good ones. To your example, it might be similar to what some people experience with gentrification of a black neighborhood. When one white family moves in, it might not be that bad. This feeling that tons of white people are moving into this area and changing the fabric of that area, changing the culture of that area.

You've heard a lot of people go, I don't really like the gentrification. Why are all these white people moving in? You can understand that perspective. I can see being a little bit upset about the change, but they're not like, kick them out. But if, well, hold on, would you say that on record? You don't think that they would say kick them out? I mean, they're not protesting in front of white homes right now in Brooklyn demanding

him to leave? Are they not? No. Okay, okay, okay. Maybe they're not, but you would agree that there is a sentiment that is against it. Yeah. And I guess what I would say is like, if we can understand that, then maybe you can understand the people from, we're going to use Montana as a placeholder, that also have that same sentiment that these people coming in are changing like what our idea of our neighborhood

and our community is. Yes. And I agree with that. But I think we have to. You said why don't we change their opinion. No, I think we had changing their opinion that like, hey, we're against all change. Like change is going to be a difficult thing at times, but you have to. I think you're talking about extremes who are like, at Tim Fried's earlier point, who

are like, we don't want legal immigration. I think they're talking about illegals, which is a pretty easy thing to get behind. Like if somebody just came to a black neighborhood in Brooklyn, would just force families out illegally, nah, this is ours, we need asylum from whatever the fuck. You'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. This is not illegal.

I just wanna point out, this is one of the reasons why I think our politics has gotten more polarized, is that in the old days, when it was all about economics, you could always split the difference. One side wanted to spend a hundred billion dollars, the other side wanted to spend nothing. There's a number in between those. Fifty, let's make it that. But when you talk about cultural issues, abortion, gay rights, immigrants, these are all kind

of like, they feel very much like they're about values. It's very hard to compromise this. And that's where we are. And it's not just America. I think all over the Western world, it's like we've moved up Maslow's hierarchy so much. What is that? Was it Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which was like when you start out in life, you need basic physical material.

I need Wi-Fi. And his final one, which I think is really interesting is self-actualization. We want to feel like we are doing the thing we were meant to do in life. We have purpose, we have dignity. And when it starts to become about all those things, it's very hard to compromise. Those issues are so amorphous. Okay, let's talk about the world. We've just been talking about America.

We've got a geopolitical expert right here. That's what happens in America. We just care about ourselves. But that's every country. Every time I go to a different place, it's like they're not concerned about anybody besides themselves. I don't know if there's anything wrong with that. I don't even think that that's like... Well, we're particularly bad.

Not bad, but big countries generally are like that in particular. People will say to me, oh, nobody in America speaks another language. Yeah, you know, but go to Russia, they speak Russian. Go to China, they speak Chinese. Now, if you go to Europe, yeah, they speak a lot of languages. Because they have to. Well, because you drive one hour and you're in another country. Yeah, I hate that they act like there's some sophistication with this.

I mean, you drive three hours here, you're still in the same Iowa cornfield. Yeah, exactly. No, not there's anything wrong with that. Okay, so let's, okay, so let's tell me about the recent, I don't even know how same Iowa cornfield. Not there's anything wrong with that. Okay. So let's tell me about the recent, I don't even know if I would call it diplomacy, but everything that happened with Iran, are you privy to what had happened? Did we blow up the nukes site or what? Why is there so much disinformation here?

So it's pretty hard to tell because the Iranians won't let you in and say, by the way, here's the damages. I think my guess is we did a lot of damage. Those are huge bombs. Nuclear facilities, nuclear enrichment facilities need structurally stable environments. They need continuous power supply. That's a very important piece of this. So if you cut the power supply through all this bombing, the centrifuges start malfunctioning. So it's very likely that there was a lot of damage.

But the key thing to remember, and this is the point that the International Atomic Agency had said, they can rebuild because you can't bomb the knowledge out of there. And remember nuclear technology is now 75 years old. This is not like cutting edge. You're not making microchips. Right, exactly. This is like the world of transistor radios and television tubes and so on. This is 1940s technology.

Can they rebuild it? Sure. And so the real answer is going to be you've got to come to some agreement with them. You've got to allow for monitoring and inspections. And that's the part where it feels like the Israelis don't want to do that because they want to just keep bombing them every now and then. And I don't think that's a stable situation for the Middle East. I think it's healthy.

And I think what Trump should do now is say, look, I gave you guys a big thing you asked for, which was we use those bunker buster bombs. Now you get on board with some kind of deal where we come up with a monitoring system. And I think it would stabilize the whole region. But look, the Israelis have done, so if you're asking what is like the big story of the last five, seven years, the big story is Israel has become the superpower of the Middle East. They have decided to take out all their enemies, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranians who are now

so much weaker than they've ever been. They attacked the Syrian militias, which then in part, led the Syrian regime to collapse. So they've managed to put back this whole array of militias that had been keeping them on edge, particularly Hezbollah. And they called the bluff. They went in. And part of it is Israel has just

become so much stronger over the last 10 or 15 years. Their technology superpower, their military superpower, largely thanks to us. We provide the weaponry and the trading and we still give them a huge amount of military aids. This is interesting, you're saying Israel is a superpower, but every politician here seems to think they're the weakest, most helpless country. They're like really vicious. Why do they keep asking us to do shit? Somalia in the 90s had no idea what rough living was. Just ask yourself, look at that world and say to yourself, look at what they've done to Hamas in Gaza, look at what they did to Hezbollah, look at what they did to Syria, look at what they've done to the Iranians.

That's this one country with 7 million people. The huge, huge support from the United States makes a difference, but they're also super inventive. The IDF, the military fights amazingly well. Look at the intelligence success of the Pedro operation against Venezuela. No question about the intelligence success. So that's the real story here. Now the question is, what does that do?

For the Palestinians, it's a very sad story, because what it means is the Israelis can just continue to pummel them in this way that feels to me completely beyond excessive. Like there are reports that they may have killed 100,000 people in Gaza by now. It's somewhere between 50 and 100,000, nobody knows, but there are Israeli reports that say it's

in that range. I heard there's a lot of people that are missing. Well, there was a report that came out by some... Hostages, as we're talking about, is missing. No, no, no. But if you just look at Gaza, right, you look at the photographs, you don't have to be an expert. It's horrible.

Right. You look at it and there's no World War II city that looked like that at the end of the Allied bombing. It's horrible. So you say to yourself, like, why do you have to do that? Why? What is your answer to that? I think that there is some combination of different things going on.

There was an element of vengeance, the sense of October 7th, which was a brutal, horrific terrorist attack. And it made Israelis think, oh my God, these people will never let us live in peace. These people always all want to kill. I understand all that. But so some of it I think is vengeance. Some of it is a Bibi Netanyahu feeling like this is my opportunity. And by the way, it allows him to stay in power because it's a wartime situation.

That's kind of what it feels like. You're a wartime prime minister. But look at the price you're exacting on innocent people to do it. The price you're exacting on innocent people. And also like this idea that this could potentially create more security for Israel. I don't know if that's necessarily true. I've never seen less support for Israel around the world, but especially in the United States. I don't know Americans outside American Jews that support what's happening right now.

And I think a lot of American Jews know in their heart that this is not right. But they don't want to say it out loud. You know, they're feeling defensive. There has been a rise of anti-Semitism in the country. That is true. That is absolutely true. So you can understand that. And there was a lot that we didn't realize was there.

Right. But again, exactly, you scratch the surface and you found, you know, it's very sad. But I think that at the end of the day, even Israelis are going to look back on this and go, what the fuck? How could we have allowed this to happen? So here's a question I have, right? Because like, I think what a lot of Americans are experiencing now that there's economic uncertainty at home is we hear these

numbers going out to other countries, right? I think that's why there was like the primal satisfaction to cutting USAID, because it was this idea that millions of dollars is no longer going around the world, it's going to stay home. Now, I don't know if it actually stays home, but to the average American, we're going to be, okay, well, now that I'm suffering, at least we're going to take care of us. And I think you see this a lot, especially with Ukraine and Russia, you saw it immediately, just the numbers, the amount of money going over there while Americans are struggling,

right? We can't pay our health care bills. We're suffering with this, not even like I'm talking about American debt. I'm talking about college loan debt, just credit card debt, whatever we have, cost of living going up, rent going crazy high. And you hear like billions of dollars just going abroad. And we started to get this sentiment where it's just like billions of dollars going abroad, especially like to destroy Gaza, like just nothing left.

And then we're going, how does this affect us? Why are we supporting this when we're suffering at home? Why isn't that money coming home to make sure we're good? And then you start hearing these things that like, I think they got healthcare in Israel, right? They got free college in Israel. Like, why don't you take the healthcare money and the college money and put it into the bombs

before you ask us to give you money for the bomb? Like, we don't got healthcare, we don't got college. I think you can understand why there is this American resentment for money going away when we need it here. At least it feels like it. To me, it feels like there's a big difference between supporting the bombardment of Gaza and USAID helping AIDS babies in Africa. I'm an unashamed supporter of USAID. I have traveled the world. I've seen these people. 60% of it was food and medicine. And yeah, we're the richest country in the history of the world. And I was always proud as an American that we were also the

most generous country in the history of the world. We basically invented foreign aid. If you look at me, you know, Elon Musk said he didn't, he didn't notice any effect of it. Well, I'm sorry if the, you know, the baby who's now gonna get AIDS because the, you know, we stopped giving the medicine is not on Twitter complaining, but those are the people, those are the people who are dying

by the hundreds of thousands. And it was a small amount of money, it's 1% of the federal budget. You know, most Americans, when they're polled and asked, small amount of money, it's 1% of the federal budget. You know, most Americans when they're polled and asked what percent of the American budget do you think we spend on foreign aid? The average number people give is like 15% or something. And it's actually 1%, it's 1 15th of that.

It's a small amount of money, you could trim it back some, but you know, that was America at its best. But you look at the bombing of Gaza, and yeah, why can't we have the strength to say, look, we support you, we support your security, we would do everything we can to support your security, but we think what you are now doing is actually hurting your security and it'll hurt your security in the long run for generations. Undoubtedly. I mean, their security is dependent on US support.

If you don't have US support, I mean, I think it's not easy to do these missions that they do. Don't get me wrong. Like it obviously needs sophisticated intelligence apparatus to execute them. But it must be nice knowing that no country can really slap you back too hard because daddy's over here. But at a certain point in time, if you don't have our support, which it doesn't feel like there is much American support, you're putting yourself in incredible—

You think American support for Israel has dropped? I think— Who supports it? I know hardcore Republican institutions. Outside of politicians. I think I know hardcore Republicans Politicians hardcore Republicans apparently like 94 percent That's like it's like hardcore Republicans are in support of everything cuz they support everything But I think a lot of the moderates a lot of the left. I remember growing up I just assumed

Palestinians were like bad because that's what the media would show me and then I remembered in the last like 15 years that kind of Shifted and now most left-wing people I know, completely pro-Palestine, most moderates I know, at least think what's happening is horrific. And then hardcore Republicans, I don't know many, but it seems like the polls I see there in favor. That's it. Yeah, I just think that like if you were looking out for the long-term success and safety of Israel, that was your main concern.

You would make sure that you wanted to foster the most nurturing relationship between, I'll let you, our greatest ally. I think that- And make sure it's bipartisan, right? That's the thing that I think a lot of people don't understand, is like, and I was talking to Barry Weiss about this, I was like, I don't think Americans know,

we hear Israel's our greatest ally, we get why we are to them, there's no question. There's never been a greater friend in the history of the world. What I don't think Americans get, our greatest ally, we get why we are to them, there's no question, right? There's never been a greater friend in the history of the world. What I don't think Americans get, and I think that the burden of this is on Israel, is to communicate to Americans what we get. And it can't just be like, oh, military intelligence. It's like, okay, well, we give you billions of dollars a year to develop it, so we pay

for that. Like, what are you doing for us? And it's on them to explain that. And if you don't explain that, then it will feel like a one-sided relationship, and you can't be upset at Americans who are hurting right now, that feel like money is going out there and they feel like politicians are kind of like, you saw Ted Cruz on Tucker. You know, like, seemingly like, oh, well, Genesis said so. Like, that's your justification?

Because Genesis said so? Well, not all of us believe everything in Genesis. Like, your justification because Genesis said so? Well not all of us believe everything in Genesis. What do you say to that? Do you know what their relationship is to us? Do you know what they give America? What we're getting out of this? There's no question it's asymmetrical. We're giving them way more than they're giving. But I think look- What are they giving? Is there a thing? I've yet for anybody to tell me an exact thing that we get. A tangible thing.

Yeah, like intelligence? Okay, like, but give me a thing. No, it's not a joke. I mean, it's not a foothold in the region. Right, it's a pro-American, it's a pro-American state. We have Saudi now, we have Qatar, we have so many other footholds. But I mean, another way to say what you're saying is the long-term security of Israel surely is going to be enhanced more than anything else by not having a situation

where you've got millions and millions of Palestinians living in your country who have no political rights. How can that be a recipe for stability in the long run? When I look at even Netanyahu, who's brilliant at the external maneuvering, he's done a brilliant job with Hezbollah and all that. What about this? You've got five million people in your country who you refuse to give political rights. And yeah, I understand there's problems, there's bad leadership and all that, but what is your

plan? What is your solution to this? Right? You just kick the can down the road? Nobody questions Hamas is horrible. Right. Nobody questions it. Discussing awful. But you've got, you know, like you're just going to keep kicking the can down the road and hoping people won't notice that five million will become six million or become seven million

people who don't have any political rights and no country. That just seems to me to be the biggest existential problem for Israel because one day you just know it's going to explode. It feels like it's exploded. Do you believe in the greater Judea ideology and do you think that that plays a role in the politics within Israel and like the high brass of Israeli government? I like this idea of like trying to basically recreate the Israel of the Old Testament and basically from Tigris to the Euphrates, take all of that land. So there's no question that that is a view held by some people in Israel on the right

who have grown in power. Like they say it openly. Ironically, the phrase from the river to the sea, the most dangerous use of it right now in Israel is by these Israeli right-wingers who say we want all of Israel from the river to the sea and we're gonna kick the Palestinians out to Libya or to Egypt or places like that and Netanyahu is allied with these people. I think it's a minority view in Israel. I think that the mainstream understands that you can't do that, you know, that would be the ethnic

cleansing of five, six million people but there's definitely a group of people who say that and they're doing it piecemeal by don't just look at what's happening in Gaza, look at what's happening in the West Bank, the expanse, land confiscations, expansion, you know, they've, they've got it to the point where one village after the other, the Palestinians, they lose their land, they lose the water supply, they lose their, and life becomes unlivable. And that is, you know, it feels to me like that is a kind of, you don't forget what they're saying. Look at their actions. The actions represent.

That's the thing. It's like, how can we in good faith believe that this is just because Hamas is this terrorist organization when in the West Bank there are these continuous expansions like you would assume that you would make the West Bank a Palestinian paradise just to prove that your intentions were for a two-state solution but when you continue to expand the place that doesn't have Hamas I think you lose some credibility in that argument. Trump has a big opportunity honestly because he's so trusted by the Israelis and if he wanted to and he were willing to spend some political capital, he could demand, he

could say we're going to have a two-state solution. It's going to be, you know, and maybe you say, okay, it's initially a demilitarized state or something like that, right? You know, that Costa Rica is a demilitarized state. Maybe that's a start because it's better than the hell that is there now. But he would have to pay political capital. And by the way, if he did it, that is his one shot at the one thing that he really wants the Nobel Peace Prize.

But use your political capital. What does that mean, use political capital? Means be willing to do unpopular things because people are going to trust your, you know, they think you have, he has credibility with the Israelis. A little of your credibility with Israel. Look, I've been there for you. Do this for me. I supported the hell out of you. You owe me one. But it doesn't seem like he's doing that at all. No, it seems like this. No, you're spandering even in that meeting with, you know, one of the greatest men on earth or something. It seems like the world wants this except Israel. Like it seems like the world wants a two-state solution except there's a. Now, to be fair, just to remind everybody, two Israeli prime ministers tried very hard

and Palestinians rejected it. Yes. And that's all real and that history has moved Israelis to the right and that's part of the problem. But you don't get to just stop trying because when you have a problem like this. I also think there's another component that's very important, which is like Iran sponsoring of terror in the region. And again, I know nothing. This is why you're here. But it seems to me the lack of involvement of the other Arab states might be indicative

of them supporting the downsized influence of Iran in the region. In other words, if I'm Saudi, if I'm UAE, it's like I want to turn this into Las Vegas. I want this to be like a fun place where people go vacation. They're not going to do that if there's going to be the Houthis that are shooting bombs over here and all these other terror proxies of Iran. So is there a version where they're just kind of like letting Israel do the job to secure the war?

They were. So I think the Iranians had a very clever strategy, which is they knew they were not very strong, particularly up against Israel with American support, right? So they came up with this strategy, asymmetrical strategy. We're going to fund these little militias, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Syrian militias, the Iraqi militias, and we're going to keep Israel and Saudi Arabia and all the American, we're going to keep them on edge. They're always going to be a little worried about what could happen.

And that's why I say what the Israelis did over the last few years has completely changed that strategic situation because they decided in a way October 7th, I think, kind of freed them up and said, we're just going to go for it. And they went after them one after the other and it turned out they were all weaker than people thought. The Israelis were stronger. They had our support. So that whole balance of power has completely shifted.

Iran is now much weaker, its militias are basically decimated. And the interesting question is that the Saudis and the Gulf states, that you're absolutely right, were very happy to have Israel take care of business, are now watching an Israel that has become the superpower. And now they go. And you wonder what they, you know, this is like classic balance of our politics where well, one, now the Iranians are so weak, they don't care that much about Iran, but I wonder whether they're looking and saying, has Israel got too strong?

Do we, you know, do we want to live in a Middle East so dominated by this one country or, you know, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're also kind of like trying to ask themselves, what does this mean? You know, it's a kind of, the Middle East of today is basically dominated by Israel, Saudi Arabia, just, you know, in certain ways, Saudi money and Turkey. And those are the three, the others are all knocked out. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second. I want to talk to you about supplements.

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And there's an interesting thing that's happened with the world of software, where it used to be you sold somebody a plane, a military, you know, a fighter jet. And it was theirs. And they would kind of run it and fix it. Nowadays, when you sell people complicated hardware, it's all got software that needs to be updated all the time.

It's SaaS diplomacy. So you can sell it to them, but you can turn the switch off. Whenever you want. Two years later. This is one of the big challenges the Europeans are having, which is they're saying to themselves, we've relied the basic deal the Europeans made with America was you protect us, in return, we'll

buy a lot of your military hardware. And so that's what tends to happen. That's why when we say we've given all this money to Ukraine, return, we'll buy a lot of your military hardware. And so that's what tends to happen. That's why when we say we've given all this money to Ukraine, it's, I mean, 90% of American aid to Ukraine has come back to American defense contractors. But now what the Europeans are saying is, suppose we buy all your stuff and we think we have to go to war with Putin and President Trump says, Putin is my best friend, you can't go to war with him, I'm gonna turn off the software updates.

Then we're stuck with these F-35s that we paid hundreds of millions of dollars for, but the Americans have cut off the- Incredibly vulnerable. So they're beginning to say, we need to have our own defense industrial base, we need to have our own defense industry. And one of the effects of Trump's warring with the Europeans is going to be the creation of a

European defense industrial base. It'll take a while, but believe me, the Germans know how to build weapons. This is not like, you know. But that's a good point. That goes right back to what you were saying about the importance of having these allies, because it allows you to outsource certain things. And once you create a system where they can no longer rely on you for certain goods, they might be military goods, especially if they're goods that ensure their survival, they will be forced to rely on themselves. Well, this is what I wonder about with Israel.

If they're able to neuter the militias in the region and all of their adversaries in that part of the world, and they're able to then take on contracts with other countries. Is it possible that they can decentralize the reliance on the American empire? They could go a little bit less, but they're too small a country to have a real defense industrial base. You know, as you're talking about a few million people, the big defense manufacturing bases tend to be in places like the United States, China, Russia.

You need to be a size and scale. So I doubt it. I also think we own the skies in a way that nobody does. The Chinese will probably rival us in the near future. But why do the Israelis have all this amazing intelligence? They're amazingly good, but they are able to get all American satellite intelligence. We provide all that stuff to them,

the real-time targeting of all these Iranian sites. How did they have the pinpoint accuracy they had? So that's our stuff? Yeah, but we- Why are we giving them all this credit? We own the skies. I mean, it's amazing how comprehensive American's view of the world is because we have these satellites all

over the world. We map every square inch of the world and we know exactly where stuff is. We can see tank movements in ways that almost no other country can. Is that all our satellites or is that a combination with like Starlink and allies? It's all our satellites. It's all, and that stuff is all military. What Starlink was able to do, which was incredibly helpful to the Ukrainians, is the Russians basically brought down the Ukrainian cellular system, Wi-Fi system, you know, all that. And you know, tank battalions need to communicate back and forth using cellular systems, Wi-Fi, all that.

Starlink provides that for them. But it's not the satellite pictures, that stuff is all, that's US. And we give the Ukrainians that. Trump occasionally has paused it when he gets into a bad mood about Zelensky, but we have usually given that stuff to them. We have managed to play this incredibly important role in the world where we can provide this but we've we have usually given that stuff to them now we have we've managed to play this incredibly important role in the world where we can you know provide this huge advantage to our friends and again you know I just think

sometimes we forget we've we've built this amazing system where we had the hub of this whole system that these people rely on us but pissing everybody off yeah we're strong enough we can strong enough, we can strong arm them, we can arm twist them, we can squeeze them for a better deal. But as any good businessman knows, the way you really build enduring businesses is not by squeezing people on every transaction, but by building relationships. You build a web of relationships that causes trust, that causes continuous business, and that's what we have. Is it possible for peace in that region? I imagine you either need, I guess, regime change

in Iran or you need the current regime to stop funding the terror in the region. You need Israel to stop turning Gaza into rubble. But it seems like there needs to be an agreement between Iran and Israel before there will be peace in the region. So a very good point. I think you're not going to get that right now because Iran doesn't even recognize Israel. But what you could get is an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia and maybe Iran and the other moderate states.

Basically you're right that you need an Iran to behave. Henry Kissinger had a great line. He said, Iran needs to decide, is it a cause or is it a country? In other words, is this a country that just wants like, we have our national interests, we need to protect them and they have legitimate interests. Or are you this cause, Islamic revolution, you were funding proxies all over the world. If you cut that stuff out and if you focus on your national interests and you say we have these defensive concerns, that I think could allow for peace between Iran and Saudi

Arabia with the United Arab Emirates and then you know you build from there Maybe so Iran doesn't necessarily have to recognize Israel, but if it is in good conversation with Saudi Saudi could apply some pressure on Iran for Israel to stop the proxies And then when when Israel and Iran are not in this proxy war the region is safer When Israel and Iran are not in this proxy war the region is safer. Exactly Economy can grow everyone. Exactly. That's his peace price. Exactly. So maybe that's what yeah And that's that and by the way that that you know, Saudi Israelis don't feel like a very real existential threat Which is like constantly we don't know what right? Correct. Look, don't forget Israel lives in a tough neighborhood

These countries have tried to go to have gone to war with it many times. They've tried to wipe it off the map. Tom Friedman, I think, once said, he said, you got to remember three things about Israel. One, it's an amazing country that built an incredible country out of the desert. Two, it can do really, really horrible things as it is doing now in Gaza. And three, in Gaza and the West Bank, I think he said, and three, it lives in a crazy neighborhood. Like all three things are true at the same time, you know?

But I think the other thing that's going for a more optimistic view of the Middle East is Saudi Arabia. We sometimes don't talk about like the good news. The good news is Saudi Arabia, which used to fund all the Islamic terrorism in the world. It used to fund all the Islamic terrorism in the world, it used to fund all the Islamic fundamentalism in the world. I'm exaggerating, but it was a huge, you know, this is where the bin ladens of the world

came from. We used to have a couple of buildings downtown. Exactly. That's 19 out of 20 of those guys, sorry, 15 out of 20 of them were, I think, were Saudi. The four pilots, I think, were the leaders were Egyptian and the others were Saudi. So Saudi Arabia has been transformed. It's now a force for stability. They have actually cracked down on all the Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism, not

just women's rights, but in many different ways they've pulled back. They're trying to find ways to stabilize the situation, be more secular. Saudi Arabia basically wants to become Dubai. And that's a very, very powerful force for stability in the region. Because as you said, they just want, they're maybe not Vegas, but they want peace,

stability, tourism, trade, commerce. That's great. There's a mafia saying, which is like, when we're at war, nobody's making money, commerce, that's great. There's a mafia saying which is like when we're at war nobody's making money, something to that extent. Yes. And like when the families are fighting it's very hard to profit, right? You've got the police looking after you, you got the FBI looking after you. When everybody's at peace you can run your little racketeering thing, you can run your gambling thing over here. And it does seem to me that like peace in the region

will bring that. The question is will the current regime in Iran allow for that to happen? But that's really interesting, using Saudi as the proxy for the peace negotiations, even though there is, I think, a religious difference, right? There is a sunni-sci, but they have actually started a rapprochement. They've had foreign ministers have met. They've gone back and forth. Again, this is all part of, and it was Saudi outreach that made this happen. This is pretty, this is transformative.

Because the Saudis, as you say, the Saudis want peace and stability because these countries, Saudi, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, they're now like, there's so much wealth has accumulated. They're like hedge funds with small countries attached to them. What they're really thinking to themselves is we need peace and stability to invest our money so that we can make a good return. You're 100% right. And you know, that is their perspective. They're almost like fund managers with huge pools of capital that need peace, stability and trade. Is it possible to get Iran economically aligned in that way? Not with this regime, I think. And I worry about when people talk about regime change in Iran.

Think about all our experiences of regime change in the Middle East. In Iran specifically. First of all, in Iran, when we've done it. But in general, these things have to come from within, these transformations. Look, Iran historically is the most of all of those countries, it's the oldest trading state in the world in some ways. This is a very sophisticated, bazaari culture, but right now they've got a bunch of crazy mullahs running them.

And I would say more than crazy, corrupt. One of the things I noticed when I went to Tehran was the degree to which you didn't realize. The people at the top actually like the sanctions because guess who does all the smuggling? Guess who benefits from like, so you take all the sanctions down, you take all the, guess what it means

for the Revolutionary Guard and for the mullahs? It means competition. All of a sudden every businessman in Iran and there are a lot of businessmen in Iran, they're going to get in on the import action, they're going to get in on the export action. Right now, so one of these guys Rafsanjani, he cornered the entire market for pistachios. Iran is one of the great places in the world. There's basically one family now that- It runs pistachios, you know the great place in the world. There's missing one family now that

Guess what if you if you had no sanctions that you know the palm of the end of the the Resnick's in California who do the wonderful Pistachios they'd be in there Like this is this is Russia after the perestroika. Yeah, right. Yeah, this is yeah Yeah, there's a you have controls. It means that somebody, because trade, capitalism has its ways. It's going to happen. I was in Turkey and I'm right there on the Bosphorus and I'm seeing all these boats come down and there's this beautiful castle. In Istanbul, there's this beautiful, I'm forgetting the name of the castle, but it is where the

Ottoman Empire, the sheikh, what are they, the sheikh? No, the leaders of the Ottoman Empire, forget what they were called. What were they called? I'm not sure, the king, the sheikh, what are they? The leaders of the Ottoman Empire forget what they were called. What were they called? I'm sure the king, but whatever their version is. Maybe I'm trying to remember. The Sultan. The Sultan, yeah. Oh, I know the one you mean, the Doma Baci Palace right on the water. And there's all these ships coming down and they're blank ships. And our tour guide was like, you see those ships? That's Russian oil. It's like the oil is going to get there. There's sanctions, but you're going to strip the colors, there's no flag flying and it's

going to go. And all that is consolidated at the top. That's such an interesting, like almost like how markets are going to decide themselves no matter what. There's a Russian oil goes to the goes to India and then when they get refined, I was talking to a guy who works at the refinery. He was like, look, once it's come to our refinery, it's Indian. It's Indian oil.

Okay, so Turkey is an interesting example of this because Erdogan has this like a stranglehold of power, right? And my understanding is that like Erdogan just gets a piece of everything, like off the top, right? It's run like a mafia state. So those are the rumors. I think it's more his son-in-law, as always happens in these situations, the person on top is like, I'm clean.

My son-in-law, you've got to talk to him if you want to get business. Who did that in our country? Was there an old guy that did that? But maybe it takes a kind of, I guess, strong man leader like that in a way to organize a system that can thrive. So like maybe that is kind of what Iran needs. Well, you know, the case of Turkey is very sad because the Turks were moving very modernizing very rapidly.

They were on a fast track to European Union membership and all this. And then Erdogan comes in and I don't think he ever wanted that future for Turkey. He wanted it to be much more. So Turkey's actually in many ways gone backwards. What really modernized Turkey over the last 20, 25 years was the prospect of European Union membership. And Erdogan, and partly the Europeans, screwed things up by saying you'll never get membership because you're a Muslim country.

Oh really? Yeah. But there are secular Muslim countries. Exactly. And I think it would have been possible to at least have some kind of associate membership or something like that. But by turning them down so dramatically, it made them turn east rather than west. And everyone kind of wanted that.

He always wanted, you know, he's always more and he, most of these places, I think what we don't understand sometimes is the religion is sometimes a charade. It's not completely a charade, but this is a power. These guys are power hungry. They want power. Look at the Syrian guy. Okay. This Syrian guy was like right.

He was to the right of al-Qaeda. These people were like hardcore Islamic, you know, fundamentally. The minute he gets into power, he's like, I want trade, I want commerce, I want to have good relations with America. And by the way, he signaled he's open to relations with Israel. Wow. Because, you know, and he wants power. It turned out he thought 20 years ago, he thought the way to power was to be an Islamic revolutionary. Now he thinks the way to be power

is a pro-American, pro-Saudi modernizer. He's right. Yeah. But these guys are, you know, I mean, that just tells you, like, don't believe too much in, oh, these guys are going to want, they want martyrdom. You know, people say that about Iran. I'm like, if these guys want martyrdom, why are they building up these huge bank accounts

in Dubai? Like, that's not going to help them in heaven, right? That's going to help them and their families for their lives now and their kids' lives now. So maybe you can use that against them. Like, maybe if we know that's what they need, then you have to show them that the pathway to power is through better relationships with the countries around them. So one of the hardest things about our relations with Iran, I think you're exactly right in

thinking along these lines, which is, look, we need to be very tough on them in terms of no, none of these proxies, militias, you know, terrorists. But if you do all the right things, there has to be an upside for them, right? And so every time we talk about the upside, people are like, you're giving them money, you're funding. First of all, it's all their oil money that we sanctioned. But secondly, how can you have a negotiation where you say to them, do everything we tell you to do and you get nothing?

And you get nothing. It's like, okay, why would I do all the things that you want me to do then if I get nothing for it? This is the tricky thing about geopolitics, because you're operating with people who say things that they might not mean, but they're the things that they believe will keep them in power. But the things that they say that they might not mean are terrifying to people. So if they say that they're going to death to America, like I'm taking that shit serious.

Exactly. I don't even know if they can reach America. But if you say death to America, I'm taking that serious. If I'm Israeli and somebody says death to America, I'm taking that shit serious. You can't begrudge people for taking threats seriously. While at the same time, if you are some form of like a geopolitical diplomat or negotiator, you have to know that what they really want hopefully more best case scenario is power just like the leader of Syria right now and

To assure their power will not be thwarted and it's very difficult to trust I would imagine America in that because we have thwarted it so many times in the past But whoo, that's a you put it very well like think about even during the Cold War You know, you'd have like these Soviet guys who'd say, we believe in worldwide communist revolution, the destruction of every capitalist society in the world, this and the other. And then they'd sit down and say, okay, can we work, can we make a trade deal? Can we, can we make a nuclear arms deal?

Like, you know, they're, they're, they're operating at two levels. Like some of that is being said, but maybe some part of it They believe some of it is for domestic legitimacy. That's what makes them feel like they're, you know holding up They the but part of it is a negotiating leverage like they're doing But at the other there's another practical level at which we did make deals with the car, you know with the Soviets We we had an arms control system that really stabilized the world so that we knew we're not going to go into a nuclear war. And that happened with these same guys who were saying, our goal is to completely destroy you.

Can I ask you a question geopolitically? When you're negotiating with a country that has a dictator who doesn't have term limits and you strike a deal, is there a world where like you can trust the longevity of that deal more than striking a deal with a president who only has a four-year term and the next administration could just undercut that deal? So for sure, which is one of the reasons why, for example, the Saudis, one of the things they've been holding out for in terms of this normalization with Israel like deal, they said, we don't want just an executive agreement like the Iran

nuclear deal. So they noticed that the Iran nuclear deal, the weakness was that a president- Cut it out. They said, we want a Senate confirmed treaty. That's interesting. Right? Which by the way, a president cannot unilaterally abrogate. So they-

Hey, that's smart. They should have said that. Right, they understood that. And look, it hurts us more when you have an administration to administration, like massive change in policy. Like look at Trump. He pulled out of the Iran deal. And as I said, you kind of look at the situation now, he's going to have to, if he wants to

stabilize the situation, he's going to have to make another deal. And by the way, it won't be that different from the original one. But I will say this, you know, people always think that because we're a democracy and we're messy and we're chaotic in foreign policy, the other side has the advantage because they're dictatorships and they have long-term view and people say that about the Chinese now. I don't buy it. Look, we were up against the Nazis, we defeated them. We were up against the Soviets, we defeated them. We were up against Al-Qaeda, we defeated

it. The truth is, and we're amazingly consistent in general, we are still on the banks of the Rhine, 75 years later, protecting Europe. We're still in Okinawa protecting the Japanese. We're still on the DMZ protecting the South Koreans. We are the kind of crazy, messy, complicated Americans, but we've kept our word in those places. Halfway across the world, we have our boys and women protecting those countries. We have not reneged on any of those commitments.

I think we do a much better job than we give ourselves credit for. Now, I agree with you, and it's also just because we're just superior Americans. That's right. But something about when you emigrate here from another country, it makes you better. But I do think there's something interesting about this

that lends itself to conspiracy a bit in that in order to have these long-term goals, it would be much easier to have a, and I hate this term, but a deep state. And I think this is where the American populace might start thinking, is there a group of people within the country that are not necessarily elected officials that are plotting the course of America. And I don't want to make an argument for the deep state here, but like one might say that having that would maintain stability in our geopolitical process, even if it goes against

the interests of Americans. So I think you're raising a really interesting point. For the continuity, for stability, for professionalism and expertise, it is important to have some group of people who are on a, you know, conducting things, whether it's in economic policy and foreign policy. But the thing to always remember is policy. But the thing to always remember is we have a very large, very powerful elected layer on top of that that can change it anytime they want. And as Donald Trump is demonstrating, you can change all of that if you want to. And if you feel like you want to rip the whole thing up and you want to completely stop giving foreign aid to poor people all over the world, you can do it tomorrow. And it shuts down. Those offices are dead, they're empty. Those poor people, Americans

who've been living in Ghana trying to help malnutrition, they're gone. And it's all gone in a hundred days. Does that affect our relationship with these countries? Of course, I think it affects it also. We've always been the good guys. I think no matter what you hear about anti-Americanism around the world, as somebody who grew up, everybody knew the Americans were the good guys. Everybody knew that if you were trying to figure out how to grow your crops better, how to irrigate your...

The country you went to was the United States. The people who would give you the money, the know-how, nobody thinks the Chinese will do that. They think the Chinese will do it in a totally self-interested way to help the Chinese. Whereas we, you know, we have, we've always had this, this sort of reputation for being willing to, to help the world rise up along with us. Even our trade policy was part of that. So, you know, it's like, why are we screwing up

something like that for 1% of the federal budget? It just seemed like- Can I use the bathroom real quick? Oh, sure. Do you have to use the bathroom? I'm good. I gotta use the bathroom, but I don't wanna miss out on this. I'm like really interested in this conversation.

This is one of the big tests that used to take place in international diplomacy. Which was who pees first? Who can stay? You win. I win. Kissinger used to take place in international diplomacy. Which was who pees first? Who can stay? You win. I win. Kissinger used to say he went to the bathroom three or four times before every talk session.

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and when you're ready to launch, squarespace.com slash flagrant to save 10% off of your first purchase of a web or domain. So again you get the free trial at Squarespace.com and then when you're ready to actually do the website and commit which you will be Squarespace.com slash flagrant you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Now let's get back to the show. God damn it I'm good. Who's a better ad reader? Nobody. America's kind of looked at as a Christian country and usually, like you were saying, we would do these nice gestures for people, but it seems like when Doge came and people

just wanted to see some cuts, I don't see too many people upset about the USAID cuts as they should be. So it's like contradictory for... You're right, you're right. It surprised me as well because I thought people would realize you know how small amount of money it was, how much good it was doing. I don't think that information got out there. I think it did and a lot of people you know a lot of it got mischaracterized very easily and it was like first all, there was almost no waste for fraud or abuse found.

Almost everything that the people around Doge said, including Elon Musk, these were programs they didn't like. You know, it's like we found a gay theater in Ireland being supported. Okay, you won the election, you want to kill the program, kill the program. It was also $10,000. Right. But there was no fraud. Like, they gave the money, they want to kill the program, kill the program. There was also $10,000. Right. But there was no fraud. They gave the money, they performed the show.

Similarly, there were condoms being given to Gaza. Well, it turned out it was condoms to the Gaza province of Mozambique that has a huge AIDS problem. And one of the most effective, cheap ways to deal with AIDS is to make people wear condoms. And that was why it was being given. So almost every one of those cases, there was no fraud, there was no corruption, there was no waste. These were just programs they knew that if they characterized in a certain way, Americans

would say, I don't want to support this or why are we giving money to foreigners? And so it was very sad because it was easy to mischaracterize. But the whole Doge experience was a fiasco. It wasn't just the USAID part. And I think what happened is that my own theory is that Musk goes in, he realizes there isn't the $2 trillion he thought he was going to be able to easily cut. And so he picks on what he knows is the most easiest target. What is the thing most Americans have resentful of? Or why do we spend money on foreigners? So even though it was a tiny part of the budget, it was low-hanging fruit.

You go for it, you mischaracterize it. And you know, the thing I think I most resent is, okay, if you're going to get rid of it for whatever your reasons, why call these people who work there criminals, okay, if you're gonna get rid of it for whatever your reasons, why call these people who work there criminals, corrupt? Like these are literally people going in for no money. They're spending their lives trying to figure out how do you get nutrition to a poor country in Africa? How do you cure disease in a poor country in Asia?

They've devoted their lives to this for 70,000 bucks a year. They're not getting rich on it. And to characterize them as criminals and mercenaries, to yank them and say, you know, in three days you've got to get back. These are people with kids in schools in these places. I thought that was shameful. I think you're actually, you have a kinder view of Elon Musk's initial intentions than I do. I think he just wanted to be in power in the government. I do think there's a lot of bloat in government spending that you could probably cut, and it didn't seem like he attacked any of that stuff.

Yeah. And I do think the theory I have is Vivek was more of a purist about it, and I'm obviously supportive of him because he's brown, but that's it. But I think he was more of a purist about wanting to have some of that waste. I think Elon and Trump were like, no, we're not doing that. We're picking and choosing. So Vivek, I think you're exactly right. Vivek understood, I think I really understand the government and he understood what, you know, the legal changes you need to make.

I think Elon went in and he was like, what he does with every company is like, cut the head count, get it down to that. But the problem is in the federal government, the money is not in the admin. It's not in the people writing the checks, it's in the numbers on the checks. It's like the money in social security is not in how many people you are at the central bureau, it's how much money you're sending out the door. Same with Medicare, same with veterans benefits. So it's like the wrong model. It's like in a tech company, maybe you get rid of 50% of the programmers

and you've made big savings. The federal government is basically a check writing operation. Somebody once called it, somebody said, the federal government of the United States is an insurance company with an army. Those are the two things it does. It writes checks and it has a big army. And that's where the money is, like not in the people writing the checks. Okay. Let's talk about China and India. India I have to ask. Let's talk about India. Let's talk about India first. So my first question, the BJP, you hear a lot from NRIs, meaning people who are Indian but didn't grow up in

India. It's the party in power. Modi. Yeah, Modi. So, we have a perception growing up here, they're doing horrible things, whatever. I was in India during Operation Sindhore when they attacked Pakistan, and talking to people there, I was there on my own, I'm not interacting with my family. Most people go back, talk to their family only, head home. There's a lot more support there than I thought, than I understood. And I also know these are people living there every day,

experiencing it every day, going through actual life there. And we just kind of put being Indian on as a costume and then make assessments. What are your thoughts on Modi, on the BJP, on how India is being governed, et cetera? So India, I think, in a sweet spot, to begin with, structurally, it's been doing reforms for 25 years. Those reforms are paying off. It's become a much more market-oriented,

growth-oriented economy. You've unleashed Indian aspirations. The average person in India thinks he can move ahead. Amazing, I think it's an amazingly hopeful story of what's happening in India. And it's actually bipartisan. It's been going on across two changes of government. It's a good example of how democracy actually has strengthened the process because you've now had two different parties in power over 25 years.

With continual growth. Still goes up. I think Modi has been a very effective economic manager. He has managed the economy very well. He hasn't done the biggest reforms. He's tried to do some of them, couldn't get through some, made mistakes, but basically very competent, very hardworking in foreign policy. He's navigated very well.

The sweet spot again is for India, that it's not China, that it's a democracy. The Americans want to do deals with it. The Europeans want to do deals with it. The Russians still want to maintain relations. So he's handled all of that well. I think, however, when you look at the issue of two things, one, his authoritarian tendencies and the treatment of Muslims in India, I think you'd have to give him a bad score. Courts in India are less independent than they used to be.

The press in India is less independent than it used to be. In fact, there's almost no real, particularly in television, the really powerful independent press in India, which used to be very strong. Treatment of minorities, not just Muslims, Christians, Buddhists. And this is not me. You look at any objective, the three institutes around the world that rate democracies, and all three of them, Freedom House, the VDEM in Sweden, Freedom House here, have actually put India in the category of almost a non-democracy because of the abuse of the rule of law, the abuse

of minorities. So it's a complicated picture where there are some very, very good things happening in India. There's a docker, there's an underbelly to it. Most of the people you're going to meet in India, just to remind you, are, you know, India's 85% Hindu. And I think that it's also fair to say Modi is very popular. Like this is not happening without public consent or anything like that.

He's very, it's a lot more like Erdogan. You know, Erdogan is, whatever you may say, he's won three elections, right? And Modi has won two elections, one of them very strongly, the last one he got pulled back a certain amount. So it's like not all good things go together, but I'd say on the whole, India is moving ahead in a very forceful way. So talking to people there, what I was told, you can tell me if it's true or not, the Congress party, which is in power before the BJP, would do the same kinds of things.

The BJP seems to, if you go against them, they will ruin you. And I've heard the party in power before that, Congress would do the same thing, but because there was only television back then and no internet, no social media, we never knew about it. Because they could just do it, they controlled the television media, they controlled the newspapers, nobody's going to find out. Now with the internet, we can call out the BJP, but they've been doing that in India since its inception. That's what I was talking about. So like I said, that's why I better to rely on objective measures used by these independent think tanks that

rate countries on the basis of judicial independence, the number of court rulings that go against the government, the number of times a judge who issues such a ruling is then transferred to some kind of wild west province. Those are the kind of things that they look at. I mean, media is very simple. There's very good data on all this. Basically, Erdogan did the same thing in Turkey. There was one independent television channel in India that was really—I wouldn't even

see anti-government, anti-BJP. It was very independent and would call it as it saw it. They decided to ruin it, to destroy it. They launched four income tax cases against it. Most people would argue these were bogus cases. The company was ruined. It was then brought down to, brought to its knees. And then Modi's favorite billionaire steps in and buys it.

Like Adani. Adani. Adani, sorry. The TV channel was called NDTV. So those are the kind of things. And you do it once, it's a good demonstration to everybody else and everybody else falls in line. But as I say, I think the truth about India is that it is doing on some dimensions is

doing very extraordinarily well and on some dimensions Modi is an extremely successful prime minister but look the BJP in its in its DNA has always had this very sectarian you talk about populism I would say yes yeah right so and and I mean you and to me, somebody like Erdogan or Orban in Hungary are very similar. Like there's a path to power which has always been about saying, you know, I'm against these secular urban elites and, you know, and all the, everything they represent. And those people, you know, the BJP say is, yeah, but the courts were full of these secular urban elites, the media was full of these guys hated us, we had to do

something about it. You know, by the way, Trump does, there's a certain amount of that Trump is doing here as well. Like why are they trying to defund every NGO and every museum had, I mean, they're going after the Smithsonian. Like, who knew that there was something so bad about dinosaurs? It's like, there's an idea that that whole class

of people are basically left-wing, you know, kind of resistors, and we've got to break them. I was seeing chatter, and I think that there might be American ignorance about when we were going through our little negotiations with China, I think a lot of Americans are like, hey, Indians are homies, why don't we just send all of our manufacturing over there? Is there a misunderstanding on how long it takes to develop efficient production lines, and how many years would it take to transition those production lines where we could send our manufacturing?

Oh, it would be hugely complicated. To begin with, the biggest challenge would be China was unusually successful at being able to consolidate all this stuff. Think about all the countries that out competed to get all this stuff to be in China. And it's not just cheap labor, because there are countries that are cheaper labor than China, all of Africa, right? Why did it not all end up in Africa?

So the Chinese were amazingly skillful and strategic and hardworking. And if you go to China, you go to these factories, they are mind-blowing. I mean there there's a level of scale and the technical expertise of doing it. Secondly, China, most people don't realize because you know we now have this idea of China is all bad. China opened itself up to the world a lot. So it lets in a lot of goods, it lets in a lot of competition. Its firms are very, very competitive and smart, and they don't have a lot of tariffs on intermediate goods.

So we were talking about the iPhone, right? So one of the difficulties of moving iPhone production from China to India was the Chinese let all the component parts in with very low tariffs. India is actually the highest tariff country in the world. India and Brazil are the two most protectionist countries in the world. So when the parts come in, you're getting charged, and then when the phone comes out, you're getting charged.

Right. So the cost, Apple had to work out a special deal with India to get them to lower the cost of all the component parts that were coming in. So now India is competitive because it has low, but it hasn't lowered them for everybody. Right now there's a kind of series of special deals. But that's what India needs to do. If India wants to really be the next China, it's got to open itself up more to the world, be less protectionist, let all these intermediate goods come in.

Then you can start doing the manufacturing. Because manufacturing is a combination of manufacturing and assembly nowadays. So you've got to be able to bring in stuff cheaply. The other piece of this is the Chinese are really good at technical education. They have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of these, I call them engineers, but they're really technicians, who can do the things that you need to do

to make an iPhone, to make machine parts, machine tools, to make cars, for example. The best Chinese EVs that BYD makes, they make for $10,000. Think about that. Like you put a 50% tariff on that that's still fifteen thousand dollars Yeah, it's half the price of a Tesla right and they've and they've why is that they have brutal internal competition They've got they they manage the owner so these companies have gotten to the point where they are they are amazingly efficient

There has been some state support, but by the way, we've also provided a lot of state support Exactly, so it's a huge market. They're very and they're very good state support, but by the way, we've also provided a lot of state support. Look at the incentives for Tesla. Right, exactly. So, it's a huge market, and they're very good. And as I said, they open themselves up much more than people realize to competition. India has not done it that much, as much. They have not been able to move as far in some of these technical fields like batteries. The Chinese dominate battery production, they dominate solar panels, things like that, which are, you know, started out as technical fields where you have to

understand it and then they they can scale in a way that nobody else can. But all of which is, to answer your question, is going to be very hard to move these supply chains. You can move some of them, you can win, and we should be trying, particularly in the areas that are national security concerns. But you have to admire what the Chinese did for all their own people. They moved 400 to 500 million people out of poverty in 25 or 30 years. Why do I see on Bloomberg once a month that the Chinese economy is falling apart. There's always some like fear-based tweet or Instagram posts and it's like the Chinese economy is finally unraveling.

And it's like, well, when is that going to happen? And what is that based on? So they face challenges. Look, every, you know, the truth is every economy face challenges and you can paint this however you want. They face real challenges. I'd say the biggest challenges are the three things. One, the thing that made China boom over the last 30 years was their embrace of the market

and their embrace of trade and their embrace of competition. Xi Jinping clearly doesn't like all that because he thinks it undermines the party. And he's right, it undermines the role of the party. Jack Ma becomes more important than Xi Jinping. He didn't like that. He didn't like that for it. So that's number one. Number two, they have accumulated a lot of debt.

All these local governments have accumulated, and I don't think it's as, it's not like a cataclysmic thing because it's debt they owe themselves. One arm of the government owes another arm of the, it's all denominated in their own currency. It's not borrowing in dollars or anything like that.

But the third is demographics. You know, the one child policy meant that they, it's a good, fascinating example of like dictatorship. Dictatorships can execute bad policies very well, but also good policies well. But when you have a bad policy and you execute it too well, that's the one child policy. By the way, India tried to do family planning also, but because it was like a messy, chaotic democracy, it never quite worked. So India's demographics are now much better than China's

because of their failure and China's success. But those three things, you put them together, it's a real challenge because you've got a regime that is a government that is less pro-market than it used to be. You've got a debt which constrains them, there's certain things they can't do. And the third is the demographics, which means they're going to have fewer workers and more retirees. But all that said, my own view is your skepticism is justified. They're going to be okay. They're going to be fine. They're going to be the second largest economy in the world for a long time. They're going to have areas of incredible

productivity. They dominate solar. They're going to dominate green and EVs and all that because we're cutting back on that stuff. So they're going to surge even further. They dominate batteries. Robotics. One out of every two robots made in the world is made in China. And they're doing very well on AI. So the thing that I worry about is, yeah, there's going to be a mass economy that's

maybe not as productive as we are. But at the top end, they're probably going to do really well at AI, and they're going to do really well at robotics. And you put AI and robotics together, and do you still need as many people as you used to? So that solves your one-child policy. That may solve your one-child policy, right. So they're going to be formidable competitor and my theory is always if you're in a race don't hope the other guy is going to trip. No. You need to be investing in yourself. We should be thinking to ourselves what do we need to be doing to be competitive, to be world-class in all these areas. That's why I'm all for be

innovative, lean into the technology. How far behind are we in those areas? Is it a gap that you close? AI, there's no question we're ahead. There's an interesting question of does it matter that much because in AI, it's like pixie dust, right? You're going to sprinkle it on everything. It's like the internet. Everyone can use it. Does it matter if some company is using DeepSeek versus ChadGPD? I don't know, but we are ahead. In robotics, they're well ahead of us. In battery, they're well ahead of us.

In green, they're well ahead of us. But there's a whole bunch of areas, nanotechnology, quantum, AI, where we're ahead. There's a lot of biotech areas where we're ahead. We're the most advanced economy in the world, no question. Now, what has kept us in that place is this extraordinary combination of government funding, research being done by universities,

and the private sector using that research. And that triangle has been, it really is, it's difficult to overestimate how important it's been, because it's been, only America does it this way. The Europeans don't have this triangle the way we do. The Chinese don't, it's all government done. The Indians is all government done.

So what we're screwing with, with these attacks on Harvard, with these attacks on universities is that, and you know, weirdly you're attacking by withdrawing funding from the research arm of these universities. The guys doing cutting edge computer physics, biology, medical research, they have nothing to do with those campus protests. I can tell you, having spent a lot of time at universities, those scientists… They go fuck about what's going on. They're very non-political. They're like sitting in their labs trying to invent the dream of the future.

And the level of funding cuts is crazy. All these labs are being shut down. Literally we have graduate students, the best graduate students who are Chinese who are hoping and dying to be in America. They're going back to China, to government sponsored labs there. Why are we doing this? With RIP. With RIP, with all our training, with all the culture. Weren't they stealing secrets and bringing it back?

Didn't two get arrested? So there's some small percentage of Chinese American graduate students were, I think, involved in that. So we have to do something about that. But the vast majority not only come here, they want to stay here. Like there's a reason they're leaving China. You know, these are not people who are super happy with being in China.

And if you look at our labs, if you look at our tech companies, if you look at biotech, it's all Chinese and Indian Americans. These are immigrants who came here, went to the best universities, wanted to stay, and have ended up doing cutting edge research or founding companies.

So let's address the problem. You're 100% right. There is some spying taking place. But we're very good at this. This is why we have huge organizations like the CIA to look into this. But let's not kill the goose that gales the golden eggs. I mean, one of the things that keeps us cutting edge. The overcorrection.

Well, look, we get the, you know, I think Lee Kuan Yew, the ruler of Singapore, put it very well. He said, look, the Chinese can tap the best and brightest in their one billion people. The Americans step the best and brightest from the eight million billion and all over the world. We want to be able to keep that. Let's keep doing that. What is the Chinese calculation when it comes to an invasion in Taiwan? Look, now nobody knows. So your guess is as good as mine. But I think my sense is, first of all, this is not just a Xi Jinping thing. Chinese have always wanted Taiwan. First of all, this is not just a Xi Jinping thing. Chinese have always wanted Taiwan. Unification of China and Taiwan is in the constitution

of the People's Republic of China. It's written into the constitution that that is going to be one of their goals. It is the unfinished part of the Communist Revolution of 1949 that they have this piece of China that is not, you know, that was the place where the nationalists escaped to, the exiles escaped to. Secondly, I think that Xi does believe that part of the kind of historical project that

he wants to oversee is some kind of grand reunification. But I think China is very different from Russia in this regard. Russia is a rogue regime. They like to cause instability around the world. Look at, you know, they're always doing it. Europe, even in the Middle East. Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, right? And don't forget, how do they make money? Like I always go back to the money. Russia, the Russian economy is basically an oil and natural gas economy, right? When you have instability, oil prices go up. So they actually don't mind instability. That's actually good for them.

Yeah, that's interesting. The Chinese are the opposite. They are consumers, not producers of energy. They need stability. They need low prices. They need international commerce. They export to the world. They need low prices. They need international commerce. They export to the world. They need open markets, you know

So they I think what I think what deters Xi Jinping more than anything else is the fear that if he were to invade Taiwan He would get cut off from all the markets of the world and there goes China's economy Wow So I think the biggest mistake we could make is to cut him off from all of that anyway. Because then he has no reason to not invade Taiwan. Then he's saying, I'm already being screwed by all these guys. Americans are shutting me out of their market. They're decoupling from us technologically.

I'm already in a fortress mentality. Why don't I, you know, and I can't, my economy is doing badly because of that. Why don't I score a big win on Taiwan? Ideological reunification plus the semiconductors. And also when the economy is doing bad, it's easier to galvanize the people. All these people want China to die. We're going to prove to them that we don't die. We can even expand.

Right. Wow, that's so interesting. So essentially coupling them, coupling with China will ensure the safety of Taiwan. To some degree, right? Like that's the leverage we have with them without Don't tell they don't use up the leverage before you know like now the Taiwan semiconductors is a really interesting question is you know the 95% of the world's most advanced semiconductors are made in one place in Taiwan by by the TSMC Can you explain to the people what and by the explain to the people what exactly a semiconductor does?

Sure. Thank God you asked, because I've been pretending for decades. Because we hear these things all the time and it's like, what exactly does it do? So a semiconductor is a piece of machinery. You've heard about how with computers, everything is bits and bytes. Everything is zeros and ones. So you're sending signals to take a language, for example, and turn it into zeros and ones. So how do you transmit that? How do you send that or store that? You have a machine that has little switches and the switch is either on or off. The on is a one,

the off is a zero. And that is your mechanism, that is the code that you're sending across now. In order to do so, you're thinking to yourself, well, we're sending a lot of stuff, right? Like, so that's why you need these massive, massive amounts of data to go to be easily stored on tiny, tiny devices. So we developed these things called chips, and they're called semiconductors because they are neither on nor off, so they're in this semi-state. And each chip, each computer chip, which looks like it's the size of maybe a nail, it has hundreds of millions of these transistors or these switches on them that have been etched into them by that lithographic machine I was talking to you about, the Dutch machine.

And so that's how you store information, so they're either memory chips or they're transmission chips which are moving stuff around. So that's the heart of all computers, of every computer. And the highest end chips, the ones that can hold the most of this stuff, are, you know, these things are now measured in nanometers, which is the, you know, like much, much thinner than a human hair. Those are only made by this one company in Taiwan. So there's a chip much thinner than a human hair that has hundreds of millions of these

little... Hundreds of millions, literally, I mean billions. And it's like it's mind blowing. These are the most complicated things human beings have ever done. And this one company in Taiwan is able to make them at five nanometer, now three nanometer, nobody else can do it. And it's really partly a kind of like mystery as to how do they, why is it like, what is the secret sauce?

Nobody knows, everyone has tried and it's a combination of these engineers who've worked together forever, the best machinery, a culture in this firm that really is all about excellence, pristine work environments like these, where environments have to be almost like vacuum so that they're so- This is Nvidia you're talking about? No, this is TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor. Got it. Because they make the chips. So Nvidia designs the chips.

And they're the ones who actually are putting them there. These are the guys who actually produce the chips. Got it. And so the argument is the Chinese will come in there because they want those. My own theory sense is you have an invasion of a country like Taiwan, which is all it has is human capital. It's only human beings. There's no natural resource. First of all, I think the United States would bomb the factories and they would be rendered inoperable. But even if they didn't, you wouldn't be able to do it anymore under some dictatorship, because the engineers would emigrate, you know,

they'd flee, they'd leave, they'd be the new boat people. The guy, the CEO once explained to me exactly how each unit worked, and they're in continuous collaboration with like seven different countries that they have research centers and ASML in Holland, which is the company that provides the lithography machines, you know, teams in the US teams in Germany. Like he said, we're like the hub of a global system. If we got invaded and all those, those, you know, things got cut off, all those connections got cut off

to us, we wouldn't be able to do what we do. So I think that the Chinese, it's not like you're going into Taiwan and there's like this big pot of gold. There is an amazing intellectual operation that requires the active participation of hundreds of high-quality engineers with machines that need to be updated constantly and the software that needs to be updated constantly, that's all going to collapse. Couldn't try to see the value in that and be like, hey, we're going to look the other way on certain things just to make sure that this factory keeps running the way it should be.

But the Germans would cut their ties, the Dutch would cut their ties, the Americans would cut their ties. And as I said, by the way, I also think the Americans would bomb the factory. So the Chinese have tried to replicate. And remember, TSMC is basically a Taiwanese company, by which I mean, it's all Chinese people. It's all ethnically Chinese people who fled the mainland know, in many cases who have fled the mainland. So you'd think it'd be pretty easy.

They've spent by some estimates $200 billion trying to recreate a version of TSMC. Can't do it. The chips they make are very low quality. They make a lot of chips. I mean, we use all the chips in our washing machines and things like that are often Chinese chips. They can't make the high-end chips. What's China's- We can't make the high-end chips. We can't make the high-end chips. Intel can't make the high-end chips.

What's China's influence in Africa? It's very real because they've provided a lot of assistance. They've built a lot of the infrastructure. But in my experience, traveling in Africa, the Africans, they like America a lot more because I'll tell you one program, George Bush to give him credit, George W. Bush, PEPFAR, this is the AIDS prevention program. It probably has saved tens and tens and tens of millions of lives in Africa. Africa was being ravaged by AIDS, and the Bush administration went in with a huge program that, again, small on our budget,

you're talking about probably a quarter of a percent of the federal budget, and it has saved tens and tens of millions of people's lives, and people know it, and people talk about it. When the Chinese come in, they build something, but they're like, and here's what we want in return. You know, there's a much more of a transaction. Quit pro quo.

There's a quit pro quo. Isn't that how their batteries are so advanced? They control the cobalt mines in Africa? It's not why they're so advanced because they got that raw material, but we could get the raw material. No, they've invested in it and they're very innovative. They're not just copying. But they do have the cobalt mines, which is apparently the worst slavery conditions

in human history. Yeah, but getting the raw material is only one part. The challenge with batteries is basically we've not found a way to make batteries much more productive. Battery technology has kind of gone up 10 or 15% a year over the last 20 years. It's kind of an interesting mystery of why, you know, and then when you can get them to be good, they're very heavy.

This is one of the big problems with green technology, wind and solar, because any wind and solar plant, you need storage because the wind is not always blowing and the sun is not always shining. If batteries were strong enough, we wouldn't need the backup that we have now, which is natural gas. Almost all these green technologies right now, they need a backup because you need something. Let's say you're at a hospital, right? The hospital needs the power all the time.

Trump caricatures it by saying, oh, honey, the wind is not going so I can't watch TV. That doesn't happen. And it doesn't happen because they all have a natural gas backup. Fusion. Now you're getting above my pay grade. Well, what about this idea that AI will get us exponentially closer to fusion?

And once we're at fusion, EV, like any of the green technology of use for energy is pretty much useless, gas will be useless. What do you think? Are we doing anything to utilize AI to get us closer to that? Is it a high dream? Right. So fusion is the holy grail because it's nuclear technology with no radioactive waste, with no instability, with no possibility of a meltdown. It's the way energy is made in the sun. I think that the people who are really smart about this, who I talk to, because I'll be honest, this is above my pay grade, say we're getting closer and we've gotten closer

than we have, than people were expecting to, but it's still gonna be a lot of trial and error before you can be sure. There is one company that Sam Altman is the chairman of called Helion, exactly, which is- Isn't Bezos involved in that too? He may be an investor and they're planning by 2028, which is three years from now, to have an operational power plant.

They've actually already contracted to sell the power to Microsoft. So like this is happening. My own guess is it'll be more in the nature of a pilot project than an actual scaling it and all that. But you're right that if the promise of fusion is if you get it right and if you can get it at the right cost, it solves all the energy problems. And we are, as far as I can tell, we are ahead of the Chinese. That's my assumption for why, like, you see Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states leaning so much, not only into like AI, but also leaning away from this dependence on natural gas.

Because with AI, it's not like we're doing these computations by hand. No, exactly. Right? If the time it takes is the trial and error, AI is a trial and error machine. Yeah. Right? 100%. That's why, by the way, Bio, you know, so like Demis Hassayab, the guy at DeepMind

who runs essentially Google's AI, who won the Nobel Prize, he says that he thinks AI will basically cure all diseases. Because a lot of what disease is trial and error. You try stuff, it doesn't work, you try something else. And the AI can kind of do it a billion times. So I mean, there's a lot of upsides to AI that are in some ways like unimaginable. Because if you could really use AI, what could we do with climate change?

What could we do with disease prevention? So we have to hold out the hope that we get incredible benefits. And yet, what I worry about is something that powerful is also going to be very disruptive. And one thing that hasn't changed is human beings, like in our psyches and our degree of nervousness and anxiety and fear and in confronting all this disruption. Yeah. Okay, listen, we know that you have to go. We could talk to you forever. There's just one last thing.

You had mentioned that you had met Kissinger a bunch. I think we've heard of Henry Kissinger as this like instrumental figure in like carving out the world as we know it today. Let's just remove what people think about him. Is he responsible for all the ills of the world? Is he responsible for good? Is there anything in conversation with him that he's told you about negotiation? Are there any tips that he's given you? Is there any wisdom that he's told you about negotiation. Like are there any like tips that he's given you?

Is there any wisdom that he's bestowed? Like what is it at the end of the day that people are wanting? Like he's been in the room during some of the most important geopolitical conversations that kind of created the world we live in today. Did you ask him anything about that? Yeah, it's funny that you focus in on that

because that is, that he was a great scholar practitioner, right? So is that it's a, he was a great scholar practitioner, right? So he had that unusual mind and he was a great negotiator. And I think for him, one of the reasons he was able to be a great negotiator is I'll be honest about this as a loyal, very proud patriotic American. Most Americans can't put themselves in the shoes of a foreigner. Americans are so... They wear shoes.

Americans, exactly. I thought they made them. Very well said. Americans are so... I mean, we're an insular country, big, vast, we dominate the world, we don't care about what you're... Because he was an immigrant, I think because he was a Jew in Germany who came to America, he was always able to put himself in the other person's shoes. And I'll be able to try to understand what the world looked like for that person and try to understand what it was that that person needed.

So one of the things I think about, I have so many thoughts while your question triggers, but one of them is that over the last 10 years of his life, what we often talk about was him trying to get inside Putin's head. He met Putin like 30 times one-on-one for hours at end. And the reason he would do it was he was trying to understand what does he want? What are his motives? Rather than just demonizing, he's trying to think, okay, what's going on? What does he need? What is keeping him in power? That skill, I think that's a muscle we Americans don't develop enough.

Sometimes when you're the country in power, you don't have to be as empathetic. Exactly. What did he say? Oh, way of negotiating with people is to say, here's what we want. So what did he say about Putin? What was his conclusion? His point was this is this vast country, you know, the largest physical space in the world. He's facing a China that they've had historically very bad relations with. He long border, during the Cold War, one third of the Soviet army used to be tied up on the

Chinese border. Toward the South, he has all these, you know, South of Chechnya, you have all these Islamic countries. He's worried about them. And you know, he's got a Western border where he sees a West that is modernizing, advancing. So his view was always that Putin was more fearful and defensive and reacting than offensive and imperial.

And I would somewhat disagree with his perspective, but I think there was a reality there about the way that Putin saw the world. So he was always asking, is there a way to stand your ground, but also reassure him? You know, is there a way to... And so he would have been a little more cautious about NATO expansion. He would have been talking... Because he knows that he's incredibly sensitive to invasion

and that's constantly in his mind. So if there is NATO expansion, he is going to react. Right, right. Oh, and so part of what always, so his thought was like, that's where you wanna keep a continuous conversation going. That's why, and that's why you don't wanna loosely say things like, oh, we want democracy in Russia, because he reads that as you want regime change.

Or, let's go. You wanna because he reads that as you want regime change. Let's go. You want to topple my regime. So don't use ideological words like that loosely. Think about what you're saying. That will trigger him and rile him up, yeah. Right, so he was always very sensitive to the idea that people in those positions are very, they want to preserve power.

They want to preserve the coherence of their country. So, he was also, we talk a little bit about Iran and he would similarly say, we've got to ask ourselves, what do the Iranians need? It can't just be about what do we need because you're not gonna get a deal that lasts for the long term. If they're not satisfied by it.

If there's not something that they get out of it. So that was always his perspective. And he always, when he was negotiating, was thinking in those terms. It's what pissed off a lot of people in America. That's why he made the opening to China. The right got very upset with him. He made a deal on Vietnam. The left got very upset.

But he was always trying to say, look, the world in which we live in is a world of grace. There's no, if you want to look for total victory, total, that's not gonna happen. You've gotta find a deal where each side can walk away feeling at least that they preserve some shred of their dignity. Yes. Fareed, Zikaria, thank you so much.

This is awesome. This is great. Thank you. Tell people where they can see you. I'm sure they're going to want to consume more. CNN, Washington Post, and then back here when you next invite me. Yes, anytime. You're more than welcome.

Thank you so much. This is awesome. See you guys. This is so great.