Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/28/26: John Mearsheimer Cooks Neocons On Iran, Russia Ukraine War Escalates, Pope Leo Warns About AI

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss John Mearsheimer on Iran and Ukraine wars, Pope's dire warning on AI.   John Mearsheimer: https://www.mearsheimer.com/ Brendan Steinhauser: http://www.brendansteinhauser.com/    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place. where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Very excited now to be joined by our great friend, Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago.

Sir, it's great to see you. Thanks for joining us again. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for inviting. Always. So, sir, you recently took part in a debate with your co-author, Dr. Stephen Walt, against Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State and Victoria Newland, famous for many reasons of being one of the preeminent neocons and very involved in what happened in the color revolution in Ukraine. But there was one particular moment we wanted your reaction to of your exchange here with Newland and Pompeo on the issue of Iran. Let's take a listen. We'll get your reaction. This is what human decency demands. You don't let a radical regime close off the global economy by firing Shaheed missiles into nations that did nothing. They're firing into civilians in the United Arab Emirates, even just this week. That's just not something that the world can accept. And so this monster is worthy of the hunt.

You do know, Mike, that we started the war. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Oh, no, no, no. They weren't firing those missiles until Israel and the United States attacked Iran. You do understand it. Welcome to 1979 when the revolutionary regime began to kill Europeans. You do know that we overthrew the democratically elected government in 1954.

Just for the record, you were talking about this. You don't think Iran has, you think Iran's forgotten about that? No, I suspect they're not. You don't think Iran remembers that we supported Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war? I know it is. I know this. Other countries have history. Do you think Iran is a monster? No. Okay. Okay. I don't think there's, I don't think there's. I'm glad I don't live there. I think many countries do many bad things, including my own. And I wouldn't call the United States a monster.

Do you also remember that we wouldn't have had October 7th if we hadn't had Iranian support for Hamas. I agree. We wouldn't have had October 7th if we'd gotten peace in the Middle East. And that's a much longer story. It is, and every single U.S. president has tried, and we'll continue to. Not very hard. But it is very important to emphasize there's no evidence that Iran even

knew about October 7th, much less positive. Oh, my goodness. I'm sure it is lovely to live where you live and believe that. There's no evidence in the public record of that. Oh, my goodness. Wow, the Smirkster from Victoria Newland, whenever you

bring up the genuine fact. that there is literally no evidence of all of that. What's your broad takeaway here? We haven't gotten to talk to you since that debate aired. I think that in terms of facts and logic that we beat them at almost every turn. And I think that's reflected in their response to my point that there was no evidence that Iran was involved in the events of October 7th. I mean, they didn't say, here are the facts that show you're wrong, or here is the report that you should read that explains why you're wrong, they just laughed at me and made fun of me. And that tells you, I believe, that they didn't have the facts on their side. And in terms of the points that Steve made,

they had no refutation for those facts, because there is no refutation for those facts. What Steve said was true. And he could have even gone further and pointed out that last June, the Iranians were negotiating in good faith and out of the blue the Israelis attacked them. and then we attacked them. And then this February, on February 28th, the Iranians were negotiating again in good faith, and we, not them, started a war. We attacked them.

We tried to decapitate and succeeded at decapitating the regime. So the idea that the Iranians are these sort of mindless aggressors who are constantly starting wars and doing all these evil things against the good guys, Israel and the United States, is, as both of you know, a laughable argument. Yeah, I was watching the full debate this morning. I haven't quite gotten all the way through it,

but one of the things that I thought was really noteworthy is, you know, your two neo-con opponents, Victoria Newland doesn't even support the war with Iran. So clearly she thinks this is not going well. And Pompeo does support it, but he believes that we're right now in a very poor position. Of course, his answer is we just need to do more war, and then that will work it all out. to me, that was very telling that neither of them could really defend the current status quo and the level of disaster that the Iran war has created for the United States. Yeah, I would also point out to you that Victoria Nuland made it clear that she disagreed

with Pompeo when he, as Secretary of State, helped President Trump pull us out of the JCPOA. She said that we should have stayed in the JCPOA. She said it had flaws, but those flaws could have been fixed, and we should have used it as a foundation to build a better agreement. And that is actually a fundamental disagreement between the two of them. So I think it was quite clear that although they both agree on a lot of issues, they disagree on a number of important issues. With regard to the subject of Iran, there's no question. It's a disaster. We have no sort of theory of victory at this point.

There's no strategy that anybody can point to that will allow us to pull our chestnuts out of the fire. And although Pompeo was a huge supporter of the Iran War, he wrote this op-ed for Fox News on February 28th that talks in very glowing terms about how the war is going to evolve. and what a wonderful move it is by President Trump to start this war. Nevertheless, given how it's gone south, he has no way of fixing the problem. He has no solution. Yeah, that was just the real. All they had was, well, that's why we have to do more.

That's what it ultimately came down to. It was really ironic, I think, actually, to see them put in that position where ultimately neither could defend how disastrous the crime. current status quo is. Obviously, Israel was something that was also hovering over the entire discussion, its own influence on the United States. Well, here we have a very recent comment from the, from Ben-Givir of Israel. Can we put C2 up here just to get your reaction, sir? Here, Ben-Gavir says, Israel will not allow Trump to make a deal with Iran. And this here, you have a, you know, member of these literally Israeli government of the security cabinet, saying that they will

not allow the United States to pursue this deal with Iran in the midst of all of these negotiations and firing and continued alleged ceasefires. What do you make of that comment? Well, it's very important to understand that the deal that will be cut, assuming we get a deal, will be a disastrous deal for Israel. Israel started this war with a number of goals. None of them have been achieved, and furthermore, Iran is going to end up controlling the Strait of Hormuz. And furthermore, it looks like if the deal is cut, that Iran's economic future looks much brighter than its economic past.

This is disastrous for Israel, and Israel wants to do everything it can to undermine the deal. This is why the Israelis are bombing away in Lebanon. This is the principal way they have of undermining any deal. And what Ben Gavir is basically saying is we don't like the deal at all. It's disastrous from our point of view, and we will make sure there is no deal. And I think he's in effect saying that, you know, we control the United States and we'll make it impossible for Trump to strike a deal. Do you think that they will succeed in that? Not only do you have escalated bombing in Lebanon, we can actually put this New York Times,

tear sheet up on the screen, that the Lebanese are resigned to a long war, even if the U.S. and Iran do make a deal. This is something that the Iranians have said from the beginning is unacceptable to them, that they want the war to end on all fronts. You also have Trump making some wild statements threatening to blow up the Omanis. If they, you know, do anything to have control or share control of the Strait of Hormuz, you have an entire neocon freakout here in the U.S. of all sorts of influencers, people who have, you know, had the ear of the White House saying, no, no, no, you can't stop now. This would be too disastrous, et cetera. So do you think that we are close to some sort of, you know, true conclusion to this war?

Well, you want to understand that we're talking first about getting a ceasefire in place and opening the straits. That's the first step in the process. And then once that, done, you'll have negotiations on the nuclear issue, on the Strait of Hormuz, on sanctions, on reparations, on missiles. They're just all sorts of issues floating around in here that have to be dealt with. A lot of moving parts, to put it in slightly different language. But up front, what we're trying to do now is just create a meaningful ceasefire. And that means, again, shutting down the war to include Lebanon and,

opening the strait. And the problem is that the Israelis do not want us to stop the war in Lebanon. And they don't want us to stop the war in Lebanon because they want to conquer territory in Lebanon. They want to defeat Hezbollah. But also because they see that is the ideal means for undermining any kind of agreement. And they don't want an agreement. The Israelis want to go back to the bombing campaign. They want the war to restart again in a meaningful way. And of course, President Trump doesn't want this at all. Trump wants to cut a deal. He understands that he has no theory of victory here,

and he's got to cut a deal to put an end to this. But the Israelis want to prevent him from doing that. And Lebanon is the key lever that they have over him. And of course, they have the lobby and the war hawks in the United States who will back up Israel at every turn. Yeah, Professor, one of the things that we were really shocked by this morning was this comment from Trump saying that he was threatening to blow up Oman if they do not abide by U.S. demands of opening the Straits of Hormuz. Let's take a listen. We'll get your reaction. No, the strait's going to be open to everybody.

It's international orders. Nobody's going to control it. We're going to watch over it. We'll watch over it. But nobody's going to control it. That's part of the negotiation that we have. They would like to control it. Nobody's going to control.

It's international waters. And Oman will behave just like everybody else and we'll have to blow them up. They understand that. They'll be fine. We'll have to blow them up. I mean, how is this going to affect our regional alliances? We've done so much damage to our regional alliances already, number one. And number two, Trump just talks like this all the time so that it's not as shocking as one.

find it to be if, you know, someone like President Biden or President Bush had said this? I mean, this is sort of par for the course for President Trump. So I think in the final analysis, it doesn't matter. The Omane's probably just rolled their eyes just like everybody else in the United States and in the Gulf did. The fact is that we're in deep trouble in the Gulf. Before the war, on February 27th, it looked like we had a formidable alliance structure. We had bases all over the region, and our allies, our Gulf allies, all thought that we would provide security for them. They thought that our security umbrella that was over their heads was a reliable one.

But the events since February 28th have shown that that was not the case, that the United States could not protect them, that those U.S. bases in the region were vulnerable. and that moving forward, they have to think seriously about how to provide for their own security and not rely on the United States in any meaningful way, because they have now seen what happened when they relied on the United States. They got clobbered, and there is always a threat these days that they'll be eliminated as functioning countries. If the war really heats up and the Iranians go after their desalination, plants and their energy infrastructure.

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Professor, while we have you, we also wanted to talk to you about the Ukraine war, which grinds on. And as far as I can tell, the front lines are more or less stuck. The Ukrainians have made very effective use of drone warfare, which has helped them overcome some of their manpower disadvantage. We can put D1 up on the screen. There is some concern, and this is a Wall Street Journal article laying out the case, that Putin could expand the war beyond Ukraine striking inside of Europe.

You have also, Kiev has been striking inside of Russia. You've had Russia escalating attacks directly on the city of Kyiv. So just give us a little bit of an update of where the war stands. And if you think that this is a realistic possibility that's being laid out here in the Wall Street Journal. Well, I think you have to separate the war on the ground from the air war. And when I talk about the air war, I'm talking about the strategic bombing where the Ukrainians are using drones and missiles to strike deep into Russia. And the Russians, of course, are doing the same thing vis-a-vis Ukraine. That's the air war.

And then there's the war on the ground. There's no question that with the coming of drones, it's very difficult to make rapid progress on the ground. But the Russians are nevertheless making progress in Ukraine. The idea that Ukraine has turned the tide on the battlefield and is rolling the Russians back or will someday roll the Russians back, is not a plausible argument. The Russians are winning on the ground, and you want to remember that they've already conquered 20%, roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory,

and they're not going to give that territory up. Ukraine is never going to recover that 20% that it's already lost. The only question is how much more territory will the Russians conquer, and they will conquer more territory. So that's the ground war. The air war is where things are getting dangerous. And there, what's happening is that the Ukrainians are using more drones and more sophisticated drones to attack deep into Russia.

And they're hitting oil refineries and they're killing lots of Russian civilians. And the Russians are reaching the point where they're saying enough is enough. And they bombed Kiev on Sunday night. in ways that they have never bombed that city before. They really turned the dogs loose, as I like to say. And they're threatening to do even more. They warned European countries to remove their diplomatic staffs from Kiev because they are obviously intending to hit targets that might include those diplomatic installations.

But the real worry is that the Russians will hit targets inside of Eastern Europe or even Western Europe. There are voices inside of Russia that say it's time to take off the gloves and to go after targets in Europe because the Europeans are assisting the Ukrainians in these attacks on Mother Russia. The argument, which is quite correct, is that there is no way that the Ukrainians could attack Russia, could attack deep into Russia with drones and missiles the way they're doing now without significant assistance from the West. And if that is the case, we, the Russians, have to attack into the West if they're going to be allowed to attack into Mother Russia. So it looks like there is a serious possibility that at some point in the future, the Russians will attack NATO countries, and that would be potentially disastrous. What we've also seen, sir, can we put D3 up here on the screen?

I took note of this yesterday. Zelensky in a new letter to President Trump and to Congress saying that he urgently needs patriot interceptors. And in the letter, basically what he says is that they're going under, like you just said, the sustained Russian attack. You have these drones and hypersonic missiles that are now being used by the Russians, which definitely do show an increase in the air war. What should we make of this then from the Ukrainian side? So if the Russians are going to escalate their attacks,

then the Ukrainians, I assume, will escalate even further in terms of their drones, not just oil refineries, but at other more strategic targets. What they're asking for Patriot Interceptors, the Trump administration also isn't a bit of a bind because of what just happened with Iran. They can't just give them over. They have to really husband their resources. What will this look like if things continue to go further?

Well, I think that there's no question that we have used up so many Patriot missiles, so many Thad missiles, Tomahawks, on and on in the war against Iran, that we're in a situation where there are great limits on the weaponry that we can provide to the Ukrainians. And, of course, this includes Patriot missiles. And Patriots were their best defensive weapons. they're out of patriots, and therefore they're wide open to attacks from Russia. And what Zelensky's trying to do is convince the Americans that they should send patriots to Ukraine to help Ukraine fend off these Russian attacks.

But the fact is that we don't have patriots to give them. We've expended so many weapons in the war against Iran. So this means that Ukraine is wide open to attack. from Russian missiles and from Russian drones for the foreseeable future. Professor, layout for us, let's say that Russia does go forward with a strike, direct strike on a NATO country. What do you think would happen then? You know, what does that look like? What actions do you believe that the U.S. would be likely to take in that scenario? Well, if you listen to the rhetoric that comes out of Russia from sort of the principal proponents of this

perspective, and this perspective enjoys widespread support inside of Russia, especially among the elites. The argument is that you would launch limited conventional attacks against the West. And if that didn't convince the West to seize and desist from helping the Ukrainians to attack into Russia, deep into Russia, then what the Russian should do is think about using nuclear weapons, not large numbers of nuclear weapons, but just a handful of nuclear weapons to send a very clear signal to the West that the Russians mean business. What the Russians feel they have to do here is established deterrence. The Russians believe, and I think quite correctly, that the West thinks that they can help Ukraine attack Russia and there'll be no price to pay for the West.

The West gets a free ride here. It just can help the Ukraine. Iranians punch away at Russia. There's no real deterrent in effect against the West. And the Russians believe they have to establish a deterrent, and they want to do that with conventional weapons, or they're talking about doing it with conventional weapons. But their argument is, if that doesn't work, they'll use nuclear weapons. The Russian perspective here is basically that the West doesn't understand that they're dealing with a nuclear-armed adversary, that we live in the nuclear world.

and that when you begin to threaten the Russian homeland and you begin to kill Russians in large numbers, that you are creating a situation where the Russians are going to have an incentive to strike back and to strike back in serious ways and to try to convince the West that we live in a world where nuclear deterrence should obtain. You and the West may have forgotten about that, but we're going to remind you that we live in a world where nuclear weapons may be used. we will use nuclear weapons, if necessary, to restore deterrence. So that's what's going on here. And it's a very dangerous situation because the West and Zelensky don't seem to care about Russian red lines. The West and the Ukrainians seem to think that they can just pound the way at the Russians and get away with it.

And if you look at the Iran situation, they were only able to establish deterrence by inflecting immense economic damage on the world. And by doing that, they were able to demand a ceasefire. You know, Russia can read the news just like anybody else and say, okay, we have to do something similar. Absolutely. And by the way, just to go back to the Iran case, when you look at the Iran case and you tie that in to North Korea, you see that North Korea was smart to get nuclear weapons and that Iran should have gotten nuclear weapons because the Israelis and the Americans definitely would not be attacking Iran if it had nuclear weapons. weapons that could hit Israel. And the reason they're doing that is because they think they can get

away with it. They can get a free ride because Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons. Yeah. And your point about the parallels between the Iranian case and the Russian case, I think, is right on the money. That's the lesson that the Russians have taken from what the Iranians have done. Well, and this is what really scares me because, first of all, it seems that, you know, enough time has passed that we've become complacent about the fact that we do live in a nuclear-armed war and what that means in terms of the level of devastating life-ending destruction can be wrought. We also live in a time where basically every other taboo has been thrown out the window. We all watched a genocide on our live feeds every day and no one with any power stepped in to do anything about it. You know, we call war peace now. We say

that Iran's the aggressors, even though we and Israel are the ones that bombed them. So every previous taboo seems to have gone out the window. The only one that seems to remain at this point is the nuclear taboo. And it makes me wonder how long that is going to be able to hold up. Yeah, I agree with everything you said. And just to sort of reinforce your point, Crystal, you want to remember that Ukraine invaded Mother Russia in August of 2024. And you also want to remember that Ukraine, and both of these operations were with assistance from the United States and Britain, attacked one leg of the strategic nuclear triad of Russia.

That's right. And as I've pointed out on a number of occasions, this was unthinkable during the Cold War. The idea that we would allow one of our allies to attack into Russian territory, it's just not in the realm of possibility during the Cold War. And the idea that we would let one of our allies with assistance from us attack one leg of the strategic nuclear triad of the Soviet Union was, again, unthinkable. But here we are in the Ukraine war, and we've helped the Ukrainians to invade Russia. We've helped the Ukrainians to attack the strategic nuclear triad of Russia. And also it seems that we helped the Ukrainians launch a decapitation attack. against Putin. It's not for certain, but it certainly looks like that. And you really wonder what the

United States and what the British are thinking when they help the Ukrainians do this. And of course, the Russians understand exactly what's going on. And that's why the Russians are deeply committed to reestablishing, or maybe I should say, establishing deterrence and making it clear to the West and to the Ukrainians that this just has to stop. And to make it stop, they're willing to go up the escalation ladder. And then, of course, the question, as we've been talking about, is whether or not they're willing to use nuclear weapons and break the nuclear taboo, so to speak. Great point. Well, thank you very much, sir. As always, we deeply appreciate your time. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show.

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We just contributed to... We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it

one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing. a bit for the podcast for people could call in and say, hey Jonas. And then I broke down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast.

But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman

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Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now is Brennan Steinhuser. He is the CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI. He's going to join us to talk about the Pope's new encyclical, 40,000 words on the topic. Thank you very much for joining us, man.

Good to see you. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. All right. So, Brendan, as a Catholic, as an AI expert, let's go and put this up here on the screen, some of the main takeaways from the Pope Leo's encyclical on AI. Why don't you break down for us some of the more important themes from this long encyclical, what it means in this modern age of AI and of digital transformation that we'll get into some of the specifics. Sure. I think Pope Leo the 14th, of course, chose his name as a nod to Pope Leo the 13th who came about in the Industrial Revolution. And so this Pope, who's a mathematician by training, understands the unique challenge that AI poses. This is going to be transformational. And so he really, in the encyclical, looks at all these different aspects of the human experience, everything from jobs in the economy and the dignity of work, to data privacy, to automated weapons, drones, flying around making decisions about who to kill or not kill. And he also looks at things like transhumanism, some of these more interesting sort of and challenging questions that we face about what it means to be human. And so he's looking at the whole picture here. And I think he's really

done it in a thoughtful way. And he's brought in a lot of experts to comment on, okay, where do we go from here? And what does Catholic social doctrine say about all of this? And what should we do? Talk a little bit more about that lens of what it even means to be human, because part of the message was that there's always this impetus to, you know, use a machine to, quote, unquote, perfect humanity. But part of humanity comes through the struggle inherent to being a human being. So talk a little bit about that lens, because I think that could be really important for stitching together the kind of broad coalition to rein in AI and make it a tool to benefit humanity that I think we all would like to see come together. Absolutely. He talks a lot about how AI and all tools should be used to serve humanity. It should be to enhance our productivity and to make us better and that we shouldn't be serving the tool, but the tool should serve us. And he talks about how technology can have a dehumanizing effect, especially if it replaces human beings and replaces us as workers and as the people making

decisions on planet Earth. He talks about how God gave us this. special place on Earth gave us stewardship. And I think he's very concerned about, you know, AI that develops into something kind of super intelligent with the rise of robotics. You put those two together and you could have a very bleak and dark future. And so he talks about avoiding that. But yeah, I think the dignity of work and sort of the future of jobs and the economy, social inequality, concentration of wealth and power, those are the things that I think most people can relate to. And I think those are the problems right before us. There was one line, maybe you can explain it to me, I'm secular.

But where are the temptation of erecting a new tower of Babel? He says, I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common goods so that humanity will never lose its beauty in the world once again will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell. What does that warning mean in the context of AI? Yeah, the Tower of Babel metaphor has been used a lot with AI, and it was interesting to see it in the first page of this encyclical.

And it's the idea from the Old Testament where the people of the world were trying to build this tower to their own glory. They were trying to essentially come together with one language and sort of a homogenous culture and they were glorifying themselves instead of God. And so that was seen as a great mistake and people were scattered and they then were scattered

about the world in different languages and couldn't communicate with each other. And the metaphor has to do with kind of with what we might be building now, which is this kind of all-powerful thing that is to the glory of humanity instead of God and that we're trying to use technology to almost become godlike. And so I think he sees that very clearly. And I think, you know, this is an idea that is very prominent,

not only within sort of Catholic tradition, but Christianity broadly. And I think the Tower of Babel also kind of, also, you know, people are familiar with it outside of religious communities. But I think it's a powerful symbol of human beings should not be trying to do something that either replaces God or that makes themselves the gods where they're actually replacing God. And so that's the idea broadly. But I think, look, this is something we can all sort of understand that the technology could become so powerful that it becomes dangerous.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's sort of radical at this point to say that the technology should actually serve humans rather than the human serving technology. And I think that shows you how far a field we've gotten from, you know, in the development of these products and how little we have really thought as a society about what we want these tools to do and to be in how we want to deploy them versus how the AI oligarchs and the Trump administration have decided that they want to go forward with this. And I wanted to ask you about a few developments in terms of the Trump administration's approach.

We can put E1B up on the screen here. I found this report to be very unsettling. They say U.S. law enforcement, this is from Wired Magazine. Daniel Bogus Law over there, U.S. law enforcement warns of anti-tech extremism as AI hatred grows. This is based on the NSPM 7, the National Security Presidential Memo 7, which instructs the Department of Justice to target anyone holding a variety of views. One of those views that they are now putting out here is, quote-unquote, anti-tech extremism. And in order for you, according to the reporting in this article, to sort of get flagged as a potential

anti-tech extremists, all you need to do is potentially be holding a strong opinion on data center development in your community or attending an anti-data center protest or, you know, another protest of one of the large tech companies. And it strikes me that this is arising at a time when there truly is a bipartisan reckoning with this technology and increasing backlash against the direction that they're going in. Absolutely. Yeah, this is a really dangerous thing. And we We've seen this play out kind of in previous administrations and in this administration, where this is used to chill free speech. It's used to sort of go after your political enemies.

I think it's really dangerous and it's a bipartisan problem, certainly, over the course of American history. But it's something that should really make all Americans come together and say, we reject that. We don't want that. Because, you know, if you support something like this and then, you know, the other political party gets into power, you don't want them coming after you. And I think this is really just an excuse to go after, you know, mostly peaceful protesters and people who are raising questions. But, you know, my response is kind of like, good luck because you're talking about like 85% of Americans have these concerns.

And, you know, the data center fight that's happening across the country is very local, very organic, very bipartisan. I mean, you see people on the left coming out, people on the right. You see, you know, these protests happening in conservative areas and more liberal areas, cities and suburbs and rural areas. So good luck calling 85% of Americans extremists. Are there some people that, you know, have done some things on all sorts of political issues over the years that are violent? Yes. And those people should be dealt with individually. But this has a chilling effect.

And I think that's exactly what they want because they see that people are rising up and they don't trust the tech oligarchs. And they want to have their freedom. And they're very skeptical about what is happening. Brennan, this also happens in conjunction. Let's put E2 up there on the screen. This was a fascinating incident where Trump was about set to sign an AI executive order. The executive order, as least as we understand it, would have required some of these AI companies to submit their models for review, or at least like some level of safety review.

It was literally hours away from being signed when it was pulled at the very last minute. The inside reporting is that David Sachs, who works in the current administration, called the president and said that this would set back the U.S. AI edge over China. What do you make of this development? I think David Sacks is not really serving in the best interest of President Trump. He's serving in his own financial interest and his, you know, cronies in, you know, big tech. I think that it's, it's frankly bad politics for Sacks to encourage the president to do this. I think the president was on the right path. I think the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, understands this and has been briefing the president on the national security implications of AI.

on the politics of this. So I think it's a grave mistake. And we want to see the administration, you know, continue to try and do something here to protect the American people. And I'm afraid if they don't, not only will we have a huge cyber incident, cyber attack this year potentially, you know, for their own political reasons, they should do this as well, because if they don't, it could be really bad for them in the midterm elections. So I think it's a bad political move, but more importantly, it's harmful to national security. And I think there are people within the administration, like the Treasury Secretary, Susie Wiles, the chief of staff. And even I think Pete Higgseth, despite this war with Anthropic, has at least reportedly been talking about some of the dangers

that advanced AI poses to national security and cybersecurity. So we need the administration to turn the ship. And frankly, if they don't, there's going to be a political backlash in November and beyond because the politics of this are very clear. Yeah. And I think it's still early days for this to be central in 2026, but I fully expect AI to be central to the debates in 2028, and there are a lot of candidates who are starting to look and form their opinions accordingly. What do you see as the most sort of dire, immediate threats from AI development? I know we had the mythos release, which wasn't released, but certain actors got it, and, you know, others who were unauthorized were able to gain access to it. And I think that was a bit of a wake-up call

for people, but what do you see as the most immediate term risks that we should be on the lookout for? It's a good question. I would say the biggest risk does relate to a cyber incident, and that's mostly because the capabilities of AI are doubling about every four months. And so the capabilities are growing rapidly. We're not able to keep up with the protection side and patching the vulnerabilities. If we don't have a safety and testing and evaluation effort in the federal government, then those capabilities are just going to outpace our defenses. And then you think about a bad actor, whether it's a terrorist group or an extremist or a state actor like China, using one of these models, distilling one of the models and then using it to attack us. That is a thing that really

keeps me up at night in the next, you know, six months to nine months. But at the same time, you have, you know, rapid job displacement happening. I mean, we've tracked over 130,000 jobs lost so far due to AI going back to next year, or last year, excuse me. And I think that's a of great concern as well, because if that continues and there's no place for those folks and they're not able to go into a new job, we could have high unemployment, we could have social and political instability, we could have even, you know, more serious kind of concentration of wealth and power and social inequality, that is not good for society. That is not good for our country. And so I think both of those things are huge problems that really are solvable if we get to work.

Yeah. Brendan, really appreciate your analysis here, man. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you guys so much for watching. Friday show tomorrow. See you all then. Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe.

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