Modern Wisdom - WW3 Debate: “We’re On the Brink of Global Collapse” - #1144

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello friends. I'm bringing a brand new live show across the UK and Ireland this October. It's story, psychology, audience Q&As and whatever happens when thousands of overthinkers voluntarily leave the house and end up in the same room together. I'd love to see you there. The last tour completely sold out. So make sure that you snag tickets now using the link in the description or heading to Chris Williamson. Live. Dublin's already sold out. Loads of venues are limited. Tickets are very limited. So get yours now. Chris Williamson.com. Live. There's a lot to pay attention to right now, given how many global conflicts are happening, shifting political powers, populist uprisings. What do you think is the biggest threat to global peace at the moment?

Starting point is 00:00:39 The biggest threat to global peace, we're about seeing our midterm elections. It's the internal divisions in the United States. Those internal divisions have been building for the last five years. They've been normalizing political violence in the United States. they've led to the rise of leaders in the United States that find the use of political violence increasingly normal. That's how we got to the Iran War. And so that, a lot of the specifics that we see, Chris, around the world, I think it's

Starting point is 00:01:09 very important to understand that there is a hub. The United States is the most important, the most powerful country on the planet. And what happens internally in the United States can have ripple effects. around the world. And so I think it's really important to not just talk about all the other issues, but to see the United States is at the center of many, maybe not all, but many of those issues. And what's happening internally in the United States, this is increasingly becoming a house divided. What do you think? I think the United States right now is the greatest threat to global peace because for the past 30 years,

Starting point is 00:01:50 Pax Americana has been dominant. and now with the rise of other powers, the United States refuses to seed its global hegemony, and this is why we're seeing conflicts all around the world, specifically in the Middle East. I don't see a global conflict coming. Many regional conflicts are coming because the global system is restructuring itself. There is not really a global system at this point, as there was during the European Imperial Age, or during the period of after. World War II, quote.

Starting point is 00:02:23 So rather than looking at a confrontation like nuclear war between the United States and Russia, we're looking at various smaller elements. Sometimes the United States gets involved. But as to the international conflict, I lived through the 1970s. It was intense in the United States, but it was intense over a very small war. So the idea that there's a global system at this point, it's emerging. But because it's not emerged yet, many of the wars are going to be regional. Right. So you still see, is it right in thinking that Ukraine, Iran, whatever happens, Taiwan, China,

Starting point is 00:03:03 that these things are separate conflicts rather than part of a single global conflict? Well, I think that we may the three of us disagree about whether or not there will be a World War III, a true unified global war. I just want to point out that right now we're experiencing multiple regional conflicts. They are linked in some ways, but together they are wrecking the global economy. They're having a major effect on the global economy, what's happening in Russia, the Russia-Ukraine war, what's happening in the Iran conflict. And if we had a conflict with Taiwan and China on top of that, even if those remain three separate arenas, we might be heading to something far worse than the 1930s depression.

Starting point is 00:03:56 So for the world. So this would have blowback effects on Africa, even though they wouldn't even be involved. So we can usefully talk about whether we should expect a true World War III scenario. But we are already seeing global consequences in ways we haven't seen since World War II. We did not see these global consequences in the Vietnam War, for example. We did not see these global consequences with the two, what we called Forever Wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. We're seeing them now and that, even if it doesn't become army on army, Chinese army on American, that kind of force on force, this is already amazingly consequential for our lives. I think what's really important to appreciate is that, yes, these conflicts are regional,

Starting point is 00:04:51 but there's a power orchestrating these conflicts, and that is the United States. So it is the United States that unilaterally, without any reason, decided to attack Iran, which start the war in the Middle East, which is right now threatening to destroy the global economy. The war in Ukraine can also be blamed on the United States because at the onset of the war in 2020, 2022, Putin and the Lenzhensky would have come to an agreement, but Boris Johnson flew into Kiev and convinced Lenski to fight this war. Right now in Southeast Asia, the United States is withdrawling, but we're seeing Japan being militarized, and we can imagine that Japan is being supported by the United States. In fact, if you look at the National Defense Strategy,

Starting point is 00:05:38 which was published by the Pentagon earlier this year, it calls for the United States withdrawing from the global stage and creating balance of power in each different region, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. So you can make the argument that the United States is intent on maintaining its global hegemony, but it recognizes that it doesn't have the military power, the political will, to control the entire world as it did in Pakistan, so it is basically offloading its responsibilities to its regional allies. NATO in Europe, Israel and the GCC in the Middle East, and Japan in Southeast Asia.

Starting point is 00:06:16 See, I agree with about 70% of what he's saying. That's pretty good. Well, I think you're really on it. And I think that the parts I really agree with are that American decisions have been at the tap route of both of these wars, the war with Russia and Ukraine, and the Iran war that we're experiencing right now. Where I may disagree is I think that they're very much a function of decisions and decision makers that have been evolving given our internal divisions in our country. I think that we shouldn't look at this as simply a product of a global cycle of empires. I think we need to

Starting point is 00:07:02 see that for the last 10 years, we have seen 10 years, not just two years, it increasingly, it incredible rise of political violence in the United States. That is being driven, Chris, by major social changes inside of the United States, the shift from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy for the first time in our 250-year history, the shift of massive wealth to the top 1% over the last several decades. These are having amazing consequences inside of our government, it's producing a set of priorities and leaders which are very different. So we are now seeing leaders that find political violence normal. And this is what you see with President Trump, both in his first term and now increasingly in

Starting point is 00:07:58 his second term, and also some by Democratic leaders. You're also seeing, because of these internal problems, Chris, I think not sufficient attention to the consequences of these global decisions. So I don't believe that we have, over the last 10 years, devoted the amount of attention to the consequences of issues with Russia and Ukraine, issues with Iran. I think that, and I think that because I've advised every White House from 2001 to 2024. I know something about this degree of attention. And I am overall observing not no attention.

Starting point is 00:08:47 I think that's not quite right. And I don't mean that they're truly trivial. But nonetheless, the idea that we would continue to support NATO expansion and make Ukraine a much, much stronger, country, even after Putin takes Crimea in 2014, without serious attention to the consequences. I think this is, there's just not, there's too much we need to see. As we're becoming internally absorbed, we're having, we have less cognitive space for the thing that I often do, strategy in the rest of the world.

Starting point is 00:09:31 And that lack of cognitive space has not just been a function of one president, but, it, I think it's been a function of multiple presidents. And I think that's really what, maybe it's not a disagreement. It's what I would say, maybe an extension or I would add to what you're saying. I guess people keep debating whether America is losing its grip as a world's superpower. 20 years from now, do you think America is relatively stronger or weaker than it is now? I would say it's not losing it. It's wanting to lose it. The past 80 years was not been a happy time of the United States. For the United States, the fundamental principle is commanded the sea from a long time. Keeping them away from the Atlantic ports was essential in this. This drew us into

Starting point is 00:10:17 creating NATO, creating a economic system based on Bretton Woods and all these other things, that put tremendous pressure on the American economy. Even recently, we had to bail out to Japanese in a way. So what I see the United States is doing, okay, and these things are not gracefully done ever, is pulling back from its vulnerability to the world, not engaging. Now, the world is not seeing it that way because various things happened. Okay, one, the Cold War ended in Ukraine. The Russian army could not take Ukraine after five years. this is not a military threat. So now the Cold War is obsolete.

Starting point is 00:11:05 And the idea of that, so the American desire, you know, is to, and what's predictable, was to disengage to the extent possible. But what the United Americans are doing is not increasing their power around the world.

Starting point is 00:11:21 It's trying to remove its vulnerability from the world, and the world feels betrayed. So the United States is no longer doing it, it no longer wants a role it had for the past eight years. But if we look out 20 years, Chris, and you ask the question, well, right now we're 26% of the world's GDP. China, 17% of the world's GDP. So we still are number one, at least in terms of the numbers. But if we look out 20 years, China has a tremendous advantage going forward, but it's not just the slope of the curve. A big thing is happening, Chris. And it's been happening.

Starting point is 00:11:58 for the last 20 years, which is we are losing the next industrial advance, the next economic revolution, and we're losing it to China. And we're not even noticing it very much, Chris. So in June of 2025, while we were bombing Fordo, I spent two weeks in China touring China's advanced industries. This was in Beijing, and this was in Wuhan. This was in Heng Cho. This was in Sen Chen. Most people go to China. First of all, they stop going after COVID. And most people who tend to go to Beijing and Shanghai. I want to see the actual advanced industries on the shop floor. For my point to you, China is a terrifically difficult position economically. Well, let me just explain. You can challenge it, George. But let me explain what I mean.

Starting point is 00:12:48 What I saw on that two-week trip, I thought I was going to go and look at sort of Alibaba, see how they were a little bit ahead of different. I came away with a completely different impression. It was the most important trial. I was in China in 1979, so I had some experience here. What I saw was not just uplifting of individual companies, Chris, uplifting whole cities. Wuhan, whole cities. So not just the advanced sector, the healthcare sector, the construction sector. When you look at what's happening in the cities, we're getting 10% of the idea of what's happening inside of China in the New York Times and in the media. February, I want to organize a trip to go back to China, Chris.

Starting point is 00:13:36 If you want to come, I think you'd find this really interesting because it's what's, so I was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. I went to the University of Pittsburgh in the Rust Belt. That's if you go from Chicago to, say, Pittsburgh, that's about, and down to St. Louis, that's about 50 million people, give or take. Well, that's about the half-moon crescent from Wuhan to Sen Chen, not identical, but pretty close. As you know, that area is a huge country. It's a huge country.

Starting point is 00:14:04 But that crescent we're talking about, what China has done, and literally in about 10 or 12 years, it has some roots in the 90s, is they have uplifted that entire 50 million people, Chris. They integrate. Why are they ahead? They're not just building companies. Their universities are tightly producing the BAs, the MAs, the PhDs. Why can't we produce more Patriot missiles right now? Why can't we just have an Operation Warp Speed? We don't have the workers to do that because we're not integrating the advanced workforce

Starting point is 00:14:44 with the advanced, with also advanced healthcare. And by the way, advanced driver's license. China's cities is not China. The rural areas of China are profoundly important. It is the second largest economy in the world. In terms of per capita income, it's 71st. The fundamental problem that China has is it cannot consume the products it produces. Right now, Xi, just a few weeks ago, announced a plan to make more demands possible in the rural regions,

Starting point is 00:15:20 which are very different from the coastal regions. And so when we look at China, we look at a country that has an economy too much, too large for it to consume. It is dependent on exports with the United States being the largest importer of Chinese goods. So we take a look at China and you take a look at how the summits are evolving and what's happening there.

Starting point is 00:15:47 I see a very different China from you. I see the cities in marvelous change, the coastal areas and South China. But that's not the majority of China. The Chinese still have the rural area where Mao Teutong went to raise the rebel army on the long march and bought it back. And that's what it did. Now, when you look at it from a kind of point of view on a global basis, it is the second largest economy. When you look at it in its ability to sustain itself, it heavily depends on exports. And what are the things that...

Starting point is 00:16:23 Because it can't consume what it produces? It can't. It can't possibly. It has tremendous capabilities. But its per capita income is very low. So you see a situation emerging as emerged several times before, particularly with the United States. The United States was a China of the 19th century. That is to say, first, the civil war took place, after that, industrial rising, that heavily dependent on exports to Europe. So when you take a look at the relationship between the economic issues and the political issues and so on and so forth,

Starting point is 00:17:04 the nature of the United States is to simultaneously have deep divisions and be able somehow to manage it, okay? So when I look at these events, and I lived through the 70s, this loathing of various passions, if you were not anti-war and went into university, you did not come out of that university frequently. So I'm not so impressed by the tensions within the United States. I don't know the period where they were there. We survived the Civil War, which was really a big discussion. So I see the United States is constantly dynamically evolving through tension. So if I was to categorize at least what I'm hearing so far from your side, China, very impressive, not just the upward trend, but the integration, this almost like systemic blending of education in with industry, et cetera, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:18:05 Beyond what we're doing. Yes. And internal strife inside of America, that's worrying. This could cause fracture and fissure. from your side, China, well, it's got some problems. Look at the rural area of this. Yes, you've got great development inside of the cities, but those are pockets that are relatively localized. That makes it less. Also, you've got this high export dependency

Starting point is 00:18:27 because you can't consume what it is that you produce, and America's been through shit before it can probably put up with it. Most of all, China is vulnerable because it depends on these exports. Assume that the other economies... folder where they can't buy it or there's a political shift the Chinese get into trouble because they must have access to the global market the same way the United States had to in the early part of this century yeah so when we look at all these things okay we say okay China has evolved dramatically it is not solved as fundamental problem which historically

Starting point is 00:19:06 is there the difference between the coastal regions of South China and the interior. This is what led to the revolution on the Mao Zetong. And he didn't solve that problem. Jang, give me your perspective. We've seen two relatively diametrically opposed insights here. Yeah, so I am complete surprised by this,

Starting point is 00:19:27 but unfortunately, and my wife's going to get very angry at me for this, but I'm another grave of George on this issue. So let me explain my reasoning. So George mentions the vulnerability of the American Empire, and that's the U.S. dollar as a global rector, reserve currency. The American people do not want this system because essentially the world can become a parasite on America, right? So if America has a global reserve currency, then America's capital markets are completely free and open and liberal. You cannot control capital flows,

Starting point is 00:19:58 and this caused tremendous problems, for example, wealth inequality, and financialization, the hauling out of the American manufacturing sector, okay? That's one issue. Another issue is America needs to guarantee global peace and security. So that's why its army is spread throughout the world. That's why its Pentagon budget is $20 a year. So the United States assumes a lot of costs. And who benefits from this arrangement? Well, two forces.

Starting point is 00:20:26 Wall Street, right, because of the financialization, but also the Chinese Communist Party. Because as George points out, China is an export-dependent economy. In fact, you can make the argument that what China is doing is free riding on the American system, right? Because when Chinese ships export their goods to Europe, to the Middle East, to the United States, it's been protected by the U.S. Navy. Now, this Chinese Navy, the U.S. Navy.

Starting point is 00:20:54 China doesn't even have a blue-water navy. It's the Americans that protect the seas. And when Chinese do exchanges, when they trade, it's for the U.S. dollar. So China is completely dependent on Pax Americana. And so the idea that as Pax America is falling, China will rise makes no sense. And I mean, the reality is, as George points out, China lacks domestic consumption power. Its people do not spend any money because its people do not have any money. All the rich people are going where?

Starting point is 00:21:27 United States. That's problem number one. But there's a huge problem that we haven't discussed, which is the demographic issue, where China is aging rapidly because of the one child policy, China has no workforce. That's why China is spending everything on robotics and on semiconductors and on AI

Starting point is 00:21:43 because China doesn't have the productive force it needs to carry it through the past 20, 40 years because of the aging crisis. So China's in a world of trouble. But where I disagree... Is it a bigger world of trouble than America? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because regardless of how you feel

Starting point is 00:22:00 about the United States right now, the United States is a self- self-sufficient, resource-rich economy with a very vibrant, energetic young population. China has the opposite problem, which is that it is extremely export-orientated. It's a very poor country, very limited resources. It's very dependent on global supply chains. And what's breaking down right now are global supply chains. Tell me if this sounds familiar.

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Starting point is 00:23:31 So I first went to China in 1979, then I didn't go back until 2012, 10 trips from 2012 to 2015. Then I went back in 2025. Even as late as 2015, I had exactly their image. Here's what happened in this trip, and this is what really are the core things that I'm seeing. number one, the Alibaba, B-YD, Shalme, I didn't just go and look at the shop floors. I met with their executives. They showed me their growth plans. It's not just that they have been spurting up since COVID.

Starting point is 00:24:10 So all this building massively development since since COVID, it's that since 2017, essentially the Trump tariffs that were first put on China in 2017 by President Trump, There's been a dramatic emphasis to disengage the development of the next generation of industries from America. So you can't buy the cutting-edge BYD vehicles here in the United States. You can't buy the next-level Tesla's of ShaoMay here in the United States. And they're not trying to sell them here. Also, the whole issue with Walmart and so forth, that's the last generation of what's

Starting point is 00:24:50 occur. They showed me their growth models. They are still export oriented, but they're not export oriented to Europe and they're not export oriented to the United States, although they take a little crumbs on the edges. It is built around Asia. They showed me the growth models that are really counting on are in Asia. Now, true, in the short term here, there's some problems with the Iran War and, of course, Asia. So we talked about that with the actual top VPs, the top executive, and they explained to me that the bottom line is the more of the United States get sucked into a quagmire with Iran. Yes, they will run into some short-term problems, but just like COVID, when they came out of those problems or the supply chain problem in COVID, they jettisoned ahead. They thought they were likely going to get ahead.

Starting point is 00:25:43 And if you look at the numbers of what the BYD production has been this year in 2006, what the numbers of ShaoMay has been, And the numbers at least we can see, they're not as good as they were hoping, but they're about at the same level as the last year. So China's not collapsing. The Chinese growth rate is down to a little over 4%. It was previously 5% and its greatest price was a 15% growth rate. And I'm saying this is the wrong measure. This would be like measuring America's growth rate without noticing electrification in the 1880s, which starts in this really small way. America has been great because since 1880, we have led every technological revolution since 1880.

Starting point is 00:26:28 The AI revolution that we're going through right now, we hope we're going to come out ahead. The stock market's certainly betting on that. I'm telling you, what I saw in China, it's not just about Deep Seek and Alibaba. they're building the core infrastructure to be able to beat us. Let me ask you this question. So right now, Japan is remititrizing rapidly. And it's building an alliance with India, the Philippines, and Australia, the quad, right? It seems to me, in the long term, the intention is to embargo China to cut off supply chains.

Starting point is 00:27:05 With India coming into it, Indonesia coming into it, and so and so forth. So from Japan all the way to India, there is at sea a blockade. That's right. So what is China's response to this possible embargo? So as I look out here, first of all, if you're quite right, that there's military possible consequence here, I think President Xi's question to Trump was exactly the right question, which was, are you, President Trump, going to fight here if there's a conflict between China and Taiwan?

Starting point is 00:27:39 And President Trump said he wouldn't answer that question. Because if you, yes, you have the quad moving forward, but if you take out the United States from that equation, as I think we are heading in that direction, then this is just a very different competition between the quad and China. They might fight, they might decide to fight, just the quad and China, and both will go down some. but this is not a sure winner for the quad over China. So I think this would be a very different... And notice, this is not China provoking the war. That's right.

Starting point is 00:28:16 This is outsiders attacking China. And what happened with Mao? This was a gigantic revolution inside of China to foreign conquest. So this is not... Talking about unifying China. If I could, the Taiwan situation has profoundly changed. Inside of Taiwan,

Starting point is 00:28:36 the population is divided almost down the middle with the KMT, the Kuomintung, which should descendant, in favor of reuniting with China in some sort of way. That's about half the population. The other half the population is very much opposed to it. From the Chinese point of view, Taiwan was a very great danger because between Japan and the Philippines, Taiwan was a blocking force. The first island chain. The first island chain.

Starting point is 00:29:08 Yeah. Yeah. That's the first island chain. That they want Taiwan opened. Okay. The United States does not have a fundamental interest on Taiwan. So the idea is we see that Xi is coming to the United States. And he has said this week, we're going to reach many great grievance in the United States.

Starting point is 00:29:32 One of the forecasts I had was that this year China and the United States would come to a fundamentalist. understanding with each other. Why? China must have that understanding. The United States is not a trivial partner, okay? It is the number one trading partner, and it is the only military threat to China. Therefore, accommodation is rational for China, and these talks have been taking place. So what I'm seeing in China is a tremendous amount of instability in the political system. the economic system is moving ahead properly. But China has a fundamental problem because, as I said, it must have a decent relation

Starting point is 00:30:12 with the United States. And the United States is said to it, we cannot be dependent on China for its imports if it is also possible to go to war with us. That happened to us during the Arab oil embargo. We were dependent on the Arabs. The Israelis went to war and they cut an embargo. It was a disaster in 1970s.

Starting point is 00:30:31 So if we are too dependent on a country with whom we have hostile relations, that's sustainable. So you're suggesting that the U.S. and China are going to become friends soon? We're not going to be friends. They're not going to be a lover. They simply need each other. And here I agree. So my whole point was not that we must then have conflict with China. In fact, when I was in China, I was giving talks arguing that given everything I just said, I think that China can rise peacefully with the United States. That's my big position. And it's because when I look out at the growth of power, what is power today? Power is modernization, technological development.

Starting point is 00:31:11 We see that right now with what we're experiencing with Iran. We're not losing to Iran because of Iran's 4% of it's because of we're behind in understanding the second precision revolution. What's happening, Chris, is others are evolving. we're used to thinking we, the United States, are on the cutting edge of everything. And what we're learning is we're not on the cutting edge of everything. Now, that doesn't mean we have to go to war against China. I was also impressed.

Starting point is 00:31:43 President Xi basically asked Trump about the Thucydides trap. Are we going to go to war? So I believe these are the right questions. I don't think we're heading to a war with China if we're smart. Because what we need to do is develop our industrial base. to develop and modernize internally. This is a choice. Back to your question.

Starting point is 00:32:05 Will we be replaced as the world's number one in 20 years? This is a choice. If we keep fighting these horrible quagmires, if we don't develop internally here, if we don't catch up to China, the answer is yes. Given where we're at at the moment, looking at your respective crystal balls,

Starting point is 00:32:26 which country do you think is the most powerful in the world in 20 years' time? The United States is the only global power. China's a regional power. You cannot push force into the Atlantic and so on. We can. So we're reaching a world that's very different. That doesn't mean that the United States is in decline.

Starting point is 00:32:45 Okay? Certainly, I agree with you on many of these things, but I don't think it's fundamental to the position of the United States. It is the United States occupied a position in the world, which caused it a great deal in many different dimensions. And that backing off from that reduces tensions within the United States and so on. I was thinking that there would be some sort of seesaw, probably between China and the U.S., but maybe there was another player that I hadn't thought about.

Starting point is 00:33:12 It sounds like both are in some form of mild decline. They're in flux. So my position is it's up to our leaders who's going to be number one in 2020. There's three dimensions of global power I would look at. Dimension number one is the country's GDP is a fraction of world product. Right now, we're 26%, China's 17. But if you look forward here, this could easily flip-flop in 20 years. The second is allies.

Starting point is 00:33:44 How many friends do you have in the world? Well, look at what's happened with the terrorists. Look at what's happening with Canada right now today. What is happening is in the middle of this gigantic war that we're having with Iran, we are deciding to alienate friends. Well, who's likely to pick up those friends? It's going to be China. And then issue number three is our technological base, our growth.

Starting point is 00:34:10 If the world economy goes over a cliff with our $40 trillion in debt, I think the idea that we're going to invest our way out of this in the AI. I'm just, look, maybe that will all work out, Chris, okay? And we're going to be fine with $40 trillion. I'm laughing my way through the apocalypse. I don't know about you. Well, I'm just trying to explain. These are the problems I'm worried about.

Starting point is 00:34:31 Just one second. Let's see it from Professor Jane. So I think that these past 30, 40 years of Pax Americana have been unique in human history. Never before had we had a power that could span the entire globe that had a, for the first time, we had a global reserve currency. Never before had one nation been able to dictate the global economy. So I think Pax American has been unique in human history. And I think we're reverting back to the mean, which is more regional dominance. So the way that I examine how nation states thrive or die is using three basic criteria,

Starting point is 00:35:10 which is going to be very different from yours. But first, I look at energy, basically how hardworking are the people. Second thing is openness, which is how open are people to change? How much are they willing to absorb new ideas? The third is cohesion, which is how much do they value their own neighbor? If you actually use these three metrics, okay? Energy, openness, and cohesion, you find that in each region, one nation will dominate above all else. So in East Asia, it would not be China that dominates.

Starting point is 00:35:42 It would be Japan that dominates. It will be in Europe. It will either be Germany or Poland, one or two. Germany is more powerful, but Poland is more cohesive. And you can tell me next week. what do you find? It's more dynamic by far. Absolutely, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:35:58 And it's more in danger, it seems. And that gives it power. Energy. That's right. And then in North America, it's the United States by far. The United States is so dominant that the United States could like keep on electing Donald Trump and that could face plant its way through the next few decades and still win. Unfortunately, unfortunately that is the case in the United States.

Starting point is 00:36:16 And then in the Middle East, I believe it is Israel. That is most dominant. In other news, have you ever noticed how some websites make it ridiculously easy to while some feel infinitely harder. Back in my day, I had to walk 10 miles to the local store. Aren't you younger than me? Yeah, but my dad got a DUI. Anyway, the reality is most businesses just get the website wrong.

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Starting point is 00:37:16 Interesting on the US's ability to put both of its feet in its mouth and continue to be preeminent power, Does that help to smooth over some cracks and inefficiencies and instabilities inside of America? The momentum, just the sheer size of it, means that there can be issues burbling below the surface that don't get seen for a little while and then eventually the sort of lid gets brought up. Obviously, you're talking about civil unrest. I don't know how likely you think civil unrest. Proper civil unrest's going to be due to this.

Starting point is 00:37:47 So I have coming out, Chris, a book called Our Own Worst Enemies. America in the age of violent populism. It's pre-order now on Amazon. It'll be available in just a couple weeks to be in your mailbox. And I've spent five years studying this problem because my work on political violence, what I do, Chris, is I look at where is the biggest threat to America? The biggest threat. So it changes from time to time.

Starting point is 00:38:16 And what I started to see after the George Floyd protests, which were mostly peaceful, but what is mostly peaceful? will mean with the George Floyd protests when 28 million are protesting and 7% are riots and political violence, that's millions of people who are unrest. And then also January 6th, this is the first time in our history that we've had a violent mob supported by the president of the United States to try to stop the constitutional process of changing presidential power in the United States. Then we've had the rise of political assassinations and assassination attempts. I could go on and on.

Starting point is 00:38:54 This is, I would say, akin to the 1960s. I agree. We've had some periods of violent populism before. The book covers that. But what's different is it's on both the right and the left. The number one fact today is tens of millions of Americans on each side. I don't mean total. Each side of the political spectrum support political violence for the goals

Starting point is 00:39:18 that they also support. That's why you're getting support for very aggressive ICE tactics against Democratic protesters, even after ICE kills those Democratic protesters. I would argue that this is not the first time it happened. We had a civil war. And that civil war, we ripped ourselves apart

Starting point is 00:39:35 and then came together again. There's a strangeness in the United States. Most countries that have that kind of civil war could not accommodate itself again. We are historically, When we take a look at these various periods in history, at each other throats, it is one of the dimensions of the United States, which is based on the fact that we're an invented country,

Starting point is 00:39:59 invented not only in the sense that the Constitution was invented, but that the population was invented. There was no other nations have histories of culture and so on. We constantly came together. So one of the things that the United States is very good at from the founding, is being deeply divided because, as John Adams said, one-third of the people were for the revolution, one-third of people were against the revolution,

Starting point is 00:40:28 one-third of people didn't care. That was his reading. So I see the divisions in a very different way than you do. Well, I don't think it's good enough to say that we survive the Civil War because 600,000 people died in the Civil War. So let's just be clear. We are $40 trillion in debt. The idea that, sure,

Starting point is 00:40:47 We'll just have a civil war and no problem. We'll get out of this just fine. This is showing how we've got to go to the civil war standard to say we can survive a civil war. No, we will not be able to be anything like. We won't even be a regional power. I disagree. Profoundly. There's a cultural nature.

Starting point is 00:41:07 China has a culture. It has a history. It has an evolution. Britain has a history and so on. Okay. Thank you. When you take a look at... What you used to.

Starting point is 00:41:16 Well, shut up. up, dude. All right? Shut up. Okay. When you take a look at American history, you measure yourself and your state of your company against something. Otherwise, you're constantly in a feeling of this has never been so terrible.

Starting point is 00:41:34 So you have to have a sense of proportion on what goes on. So when we look at the division in the United States between World War II, between the isolationists and the interventionists, We have constantly approached the world deeply divided, okay? I saw that, mentioned in the Civil War because I was the most extreme example, but even the revolution was not a joint universal uprising. It was deeply divided. And my wife's family had to move to Canada because after they won...

Starting point is 00:42:12 That's a high price to pay. Well, they were... The point I make in banking here is that... Put me in the wall. One of the things about the Americans is we're constantly having the feeling we're going to hell. We have the ability to overestimate tremendously our weaknesses and underestimate the tremendous strengths. This is where I have to respect you and disagree with you. I look at the past as a measure of the culture and its flexibility and viability even under pressure.

Starting point is 00:42:45 Do you think America is a country permanently in strife internally, or is there something unique about the modern? Well, let me also be clear. My book is explaining we're not heading to civil war. We are heading to violent populism, and we're in the middle of violent populism. Can you explain what the difference is, please? Yes. Civil war is where you have armies going toe to toe. Truly, this is battle after battle, so we start to see the movies on Civil War. These are, I think, the extreme.

Starting point is 00:43:15 scenarios, and we can talk about extreme scenarios. I hope we would never get there, so I don't find them acceptable, but I don't think that's really what our future is. I think our future is, we're more in danger of becoming Turkey, for example, where because we have normalized political violence, it starts to become normal for the president to absorb more and more powers under the presidency. And then also to sort of hide things. So this isn't just happening with President Trump. During President Biden's presidency, we had open borders, essentially. We had 10 million plus come into the country.

Starting point is 00:43:56 And yet, this was all the image was, oh, no, there's nothing happening at the border. It's literally not happening. And that was by a Democratic president. So what I'm trying to point out, Chris, is that we're in a world where because political violence is becoming normal and George is finding it, well, sure, it's just okay. It's just another day in America. This is what I'm taking, this is what the book's about. It's about how political violence has become normal for tens of millions of Americans for the first time since the 1960s. And this has consequences because it's on both the right and the left. And we're coming to an

Starting point is 00:44:34 election. And this midterms, we already have, and I was just on many podcasts, we have people who are terrified that President Trump is going to seize ballot boxes. Now, why would they be terrified of that? Because President Trump said he was going to do that in February. So this isn't just coming out of nowhere. And when I'm on those podcasts, I'm trying to say, yes, that may happen, but we will hold ourselves together. And here's how we're going to do it. So I'm not trying to tell you we're heading to Civil War. I'm also not trying to tell you civil war would just be fine. What I am trying to tell you is the way you're going to see powers absorbed by the federal government, things like use of martial law and so forth, is because political violence has become normalized.

Starting point is 00:45:25 The normalization, which is the difference on your... What's your perspective on internal strife in America? Right. So I think, like, the best historical analogy for the United States right now is a Roman empire. And the critical turning point for the Roman Empire is maybe 150 BCE. And this is the Third Puneic War. This is before the Third Pyrnique War starts between Carthage and Rome. At this point, Carthage is basically destroyed and it's just an economic center. It's no longer a military power.

Starting point is 00:45:55 And there's a huge debate in the Roman Senate about what to do with Carthage. Cato the Elder demanded the destruction of Carthage because Carthage would always be a threat. to roam otherwise. Everyone else was like, no, guys, we cannot destroy Carthage because if we destroy Carthage, what happened is we will have no external enemy and we will start to tear ourselves apart. Cato the Elder won and they destroyed Carthage in a third-minute war and then right what happens afterwards? Complete civil strife. And after the Civil War starts, starting with it starts about 100 BCE, something called the social war. But it never really stops.

Starting point is 00:46:36 So social war then leads to the rise of Julius Caesar, which leads to the rise of Augustus Caesar, which then leads to all sorts of wars. So that's a problem with the United States. The United States is the most violent country on this planet, like by far. There are more guns per capita. There are more guns than people. And like America's the only nation to play football. Am I correct to say only Americans play football?

Starting point is 00:47:02 So Americans have this tremendous energy. Hang on, hang on. Are you going to have to draw the parallel between there's lots of guns in America and America is the only country to play football? I feel like I've missed something there. Right. What I'm saying is that America is a society that pride itself on the First Amendment and the Second Amendment. It's a society that is by the standards of every other society, it's pretty aggressive. Right. The physical contact, violence, like listening to Metallica and flying F-14s and shit. So with this energy, you can either directed outwards to, you know, conquering the world, or if you don't direct it outwards, and there's a fear that it becomes directed inwards,

Starting point is 00:47:47 which could lead to civil war. It could be violent populism. It could be a full civil war. It could also be an interest in the city very much like the movie, one battle after another. But I do think that right now at this point, domestic violence is almost unavoidable. Really? Why? If you just, I mean, like, you can, you can agree or disagree, but I think there are certain trends that are in place that make internal violence unavoidable. So the first is just the wealth inequality, the financialization of society. what I was talking about. That's one trend, but another major trend is the gerontocracy, the baby boomers.

Starting point is 00:48:32 So what's happened is that baby boomers, I apologize to both of you, but the baby boomers happen applies to political power, I can make wealth, and social status. And if you're a young person, you have absolutely no opportunity. You know, so James B. Calhoun in 1960s, he ran a very experimental called the rat utopia experiment. He basically put rats in a paradise where there'd be no predators, free food every day. And all that happened was the rats just turned against each other and killed each other. And the reason why is young men, especially young men, they strive for social status. If you don't give them social status, if they're unable to climb the social hierarchy and find recognition and status, they turn violent. And this is just human nature.

Starting point is 00:49:22 So we tried to get at this. So this book that I'm coming out with, it's not, it's a product of this five years of research that we've been doing at the Chicago project on security and threats at the University of Chicago. 20 national surveys. This is where all that millions of dollars. And why we did all that was to try to answer some of the why questions. So we asked questions such as how worried are you, you won't be as prosperous as your parents. that kind of gets at the wealth inequality and the social mobility. Well, we didn't just find out the general answer to that.

Starting point is 00:49:58 We wanted to know, did that make you more likely to support violence, political violence? And it turns out, the more you think you won't be as prosperous as your parents, the more you support political violence on the right and on the left. It's a wedge. It drives both sides up. We also asked, remember I mentioned the second social change? were transitioning from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy. Well, other countries in the world, this has played a huge role in political violence.

Starting point is 00:50:29 That's why Lebanon, for instance, has had so much political violence over the years, over the decades. Well, this is not unique to America, but it's happening for us now, Chris, for the first time. And so we ask the question, are you happy with the transition to a white minority democracy, or are you unhappy and want to reverse it? And what do we find? If you want to reverse it, you are far more likely to support political violence on right-wing issues.

Starting point is 00:50:56 If you want to keep it going, you're more likely to support political violence on left-wing issues. These are not happening in isolation. They're not just swirling around. And, gee, it's kind of random why we're having this rise of violent populism now. There are actual reasons. And they overlap with some of what John is talking about. But we're able to get to the data to see, well, let's do some tests here and see. Can we really see it in the data?

Starting point is 00:51:25 And the answer is yes. And this is why, so it's been very worrisome, Chris, for some time. So a year ago, I published a big op-ed June 2025 in the New York Times. I was explaining this data in this op-ed. And I was warning, we're on the brink of major political violence. And what happens, the Charlie Kirk assassination happens. What happens? We get the rise of Operation Midway Blitz and then Metro Blitz.

Starting point is 00:51:53 And that wasn't the first time, Chris. So a year before that, this data was showing a rise of anger to the point of violence against President Trump. This was in June, 2024. So I brought it to our National Sheriffs Association. So I'm connected with these. So remember, advised White Houses, et cetera. And I warned them that there's a non-trivial possibility that we're going to see a assassination attempt against President Trump.

Starting point is 00:52:21 When did you say this? This was the last week of June, 2004. Now, they listened. I'm just going to say, Chris, they listened, and guess what happened on July 13th?

Starting point is 00:52:34 And then what happened in my phone is it blew up because suddenly people were, let's get that data. I literally blew up. But what I'm trying to say is, Chris, this is, So just as my 20 years of modeling of the Iran war has led to some predictions about what might come in advance,

Starting point is 00:52:54 we haven't, but that's, of course, been well known at this point. This is not the first time. My work has been studying political violence, not just in the rearview mirror, but with an eye toward giving real decision makers, whether it's chief of staff of the Air Force, West Wing of the White House, FBI, for, I call I call it strategic intelligence. It's not tactical intelligence. It's where things are heading to see where probabilities of events in the future are shifting. That's my work.

Starting point is 00:53:29 I don't disagree with you. We are in a violent time. I simply put that context of American history and American culture. So if we're doing something that we've never done before and never done before and recovered from and so on, It's very different from this is unprecedented. So when I look at culture, I take a look at the culture itself, and ask the question, is there a precedent for this? Okay.

Starting point is 00:54:02 Is this something we've never seen? If that's true, then there's a radical shift possible. If this is a cycle, a process of a cycle that periodically happens and comes and goes and is handled in the past, There's a high probability of a counteraction, of subsiding. So this is why I go back to things that don't seem very relevant because they went away. But if you'd lived through the 1930s with the isolationists deeply, in some ways, anti-Semitic and everything else, and the tensions that were there, well, I've seen that. So what I talk about the Civil War, it's just to say this was the most extreme event.

Starting point is 00:54:46 of this sort and we survived. So I asked question, not only is a crisis coming, which I completely agree with you on, but is it in the nature of the culture of the United States to withstand those crises? Yeah, I suppose. Okay, so your point is this might not be terminal, this might not be existential to the United States. I mean, does anybody think, like, even if it was a civil war, there would be some people left. And then you've got a country afterward, like from the ashes, something can come back. What came out of that of civil war was the most dynamic development economically, perhaps in history.

Starting point is 00:55:23 This is like an accelerationist argument. It has nothing to do with the causality or this is necessary. I'm simply saying to you that if you get a fever that you've never had before, well, that's really significant. If on the other hand, you had another cold, you don't take you that seriously. I'm trying to put this in the context of the American nature. So I'm arguing there's a culture, there's a nature, there's a history. I just want to make too quick. And one thing, no, and one thing is, every time we sought, we were finished.

Starting point is 00:56:00 During the 70s, the idea, the killings, the kidnappings, and everything that were going on. Well, they went away. So I'm saying there's a sick little process. A quick aside, you probably heard me talk about element before, and that's because started every single morning the same way for the last five years now, which is a cold glass of water with element in it. Element is an electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. It's a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium and magnesium. No sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients. It reduces muscle cramps and fatigue, supports brain

Starting point is 00:56:32 function and helps to regulate your appetite throughout the day. I genuinely notice the difference when I take it versus when I don't, which is why I don't shut up about it and also why it's used by everyone, from Dr. Andrew Huberman to Olympic athletes and FBI sniper teams, the good sniper teams, not the bad ones. Also, they have no questions asked refund policy. So if you don't like it for any reason, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of elements most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to link in the description below. They're heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. So I would just say two,

Starting point is 00:57:11 quick points. Number one is, I want it on the record, I am not pro-Civil War. That's the acceleration. I just want to be clear. Just want to make sure I'm on the record for it. Number two. No, hold it. Number two, more seriously. So the point of the research of the book isn't just to give histories of the 60s. It's why did the violence in the 60s end? It ends for real reasons. It's not just we burn ourselves out. There were two drivers to the 1960s political violence. They're driven on social change. Drain's number one. one was we had a massive shift in migration of blacks to the north and the Midwest that we're not getting political representation. That was underneath the black riots, Malcolm X, the ballot,

Starting point is 00:57:54 or the bullet. By the mid-1970s, you start to have the black caucus. You actually get some black. Now, it's not as good as it should be. I'm not trying to say it's perfect, but this is one of the big reasons why that violence comes down. There's a second driver of violence in the 1960s. It's the Vietnam War, the anti-war movement, conscription. What ends? It's not just the Vietnam War ends, Chris. Conscription ended. We end in 1973, conscription. So I never had to be conscripted. Something structural has changed. And that took the steam out of the anti-war movement. As soon as the end, that's what ended the weatherman, the weather underground. That's what ended those, that violent protests here. Both of those issues end.

Starting point is 00:58:42 So my point is we can actually look today at the social causes, and I can tell you, we're likely to have this violent populism for another 10 years. It's not just— You think that there's another decade of this? Yes, because of the social changes. We can talk about those shifts, Chris. Then I ask you the question, how does it end this time? This is up to us, and that's my point. My point is that this is not all in historical inevitability, and we shouldn't just throw the dice to the world.

Starting point is 00:59:10 wind. We should understand what's happening to us so that we can make more intelligent decisions going forward. It's not just a prediction of doom and gloom. It's things are going in a bad direction. Let's take that seriously. And then let's do something to offset it. That's been my world with mostly foreign policy elites for the last 30 years. I'm now trying to do that with the public. So you reckon there's going to be internal strife for the next 10 years? Right. So back to the young man problem. So right now, there's a very popular phrase called hypergamy. I'm not sure if you know what hypergamy means. You know what it means. What are you looking at me is hypergamy? He's saying that's because I'm a high value male. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So the problem is that the majority of young men are not able to find a suitable mate. Because one way to reduce young men, men's like violent tendencies is to get married, have children, and then become protective members of

Starting point is 01:00:14 society. But if like, you know, the majority of young men cannot get married, then what's a solution? Well, you send them off to war, right? So, um, there are two possibilities ahead for the United States. How do you do with these millions of young men who cannot get late, basically? Well, you send them off, some off the war to die. If you did that, if you had conscription, it's possible. They, they would just rather fight you. Okay, so another solution is to colonize North and South America, to turn the entire Western Hemisphere into a U.S. colony. And they're doing that already with Venezuela.

Starting point is 01:00:52 They'll probably do that with Canada. They're talking about Greenland. You think that realistically America would try and colonize Canada, Greenland, and Venezuela, not just, oh, we're going to take a couple of leaders here and have soft power. They would actually try to do that. Yes, I do, because there's no one to stop. the United States from doing this? Why wouldn't the United States just take Alberta?

Starting point is 01:01:13 What's stopping the United States from just taking Alberta? Is that not law? Is that not like... Canada has what army again? Yeah, yeah. The reason he's saying Alberta is that's where the oil is. So one of the things... So this is something I was...

Starting point is 01:01:27 So with my classes at the University of Chicago, so not for the reason of the exact same dynamic. I won't quite go that far. But what I... So having studied violent populism, I watched over 200 of President Trump's speeches as he was running for president, 200 all the way through. I went to four of his rallies, which didn't mean you just go to his rallies and listen to a Trump rally. That means you get there at 8 a.m.

Starting point is 01:01:54 You're already three hours late because you can, and you can still barely see the stage, by the way. And you have to wait 10 hours and you can't move. If you move, you lose your place in line and you're all the way at the back. So that's why those hundreds of people are. dropping over there. So what do you do? I surveyed them. I talked to them. I actually literally, that's what it surveys. And so I learned a lot about what was underneath the support for Trump. I also went to Harris rallies. And it was easier to get there. You get at 3.30. You still get a seat. So it's a little different there. So nonetheless, nonetheless, what he is describing here,

Starting point is 01:02:32 you could see a lot of, in some of what President Trump was saying, he was planting some seeds. But come on. Bombastic, this guy, gregarious, talky-talkie. Like, isn't this a cool talkie? Well, that would be... Realistically, he's going to go to China. Hold it.

Starting point is 01:02:47 That was all fine, Chris, until after the election, it wasn't just talky-talkie. It got seriously, seriously. Okay. So I'm not telling you, I'm not telling you, I immediately jump to the conclusion, oh, that would be a 99% likelihood of happening. I work in percentages. Okay. What do you think is the percentage likely?

Starting point is 01:03:08 heard that Greenland or Canada or Venezuela are brought into the American remit? I think it turns hugely on what happens with this election in 2028. So if we are internally divided, as I think there's likely to be, I think this external expansion is likely to go down. However, if it turns out that this is not just, we're not internally divided, but we see the MAGO red wave get stronger and stronger and stronger, there's a very good chance that what Zhang is talking about will come to be. Because these are, this is what I mean by, it's up to us, Chris. This is wild. I did not think that I was going to find out that we were maybe going to invade Canada and Greenland and Venezuela. Why not? I just, it seems so intense. It's so

Starting point is 01:03:59 absurd and, and this would be, it would be invasion. I'd agree with you. Well, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, again, the probabilities here, so let's be clear. I'm not saying this is 70% likely, so I deal in the world of probabilities. But if we're talking about where there is a world where this is even a 20% probability, this changes everything. The idea then, if it's even 20% likely, and notice what's happening with Carney. Notice what's happening with the leaders. I don't think Carney believes it's 80% likely, but if you listen to his speech in Munich this year, he certainly thinks there's something on the horizon and President Trump has been talking directly to him about moving the border with Canada and the treaty and abandoning the 1908 treaty with Canada.

Starting point is 01:04:49 This has been a direct conversation with the prime ministers of Canada in the last year and a half. This is, I don't say it means it's a certainty, Chris, that's going too far, but to ignore that this is then translating into taking Venezuela's oil. serious war planning now for Greenland. The war planning doesn't equal conquest, Chris, but I think we're making a mistake to just simply dismiss it as, oh, this is just talk on the side. I wasn't dismissing it. I didn't even know that it was an option on the table. What do you think is more likely China into Taiwan or the U.S. into one of Canada, Greenland, Venezuela? Oh, I vote for the latter with the U.S. So I think that from no way. All of this talk, all of this talk that people are

Starting point is 01:05:37 the processors, the microcheting, all of the China into Taiwan. So I've been arguing for decades. More likely that we're going to go into Canada, Venezuela or Ukraine. If China plays its cards right, Taiwan is going to fall right into China's lap. So President Chen brought me to Taiwan in January 2003. I was one of five air power experts. This was the president of Taiwan, okay, for a two-day conference with the president of Taiwan. He wanted the answer to the question.

Starting point is 01:06:04 This is January 2003. what should Taiwan do if China preemptively attacks Taiwan while the United States is preemptively attacking Iraq? So remember, we had this thing called the Iraq War. Well, for Taiwan, that was a very scary situation. So for two days, I was with the president and also with the top of the Air Force, and we were discussing the no kidding discussions here. And I also got windows into their national security. and I got the polls, that is the internal polls, which there was nothing classified inside no NDAs, so I'm not revealing anything that I'm not supposed to be.

Starting point is 01:06:42 But I'm telling you that one of the absolute issues here with Taiwan is there's a large part of the population that sees growth over there. And they're happy to get some growth called Taipei 101. So there's a whole lot underneath this, Chris. It doesn't mean Taiwan is certain to sort of go in China's way. But what I've been arguing for some time is that if China just continues to grow, then what's going to happen is it will eventually dwarf Taiwan even more than it does today. And a lot of folks in Taiwan are going to want to make money in China. And we've already talked about that.

Starting point is 01:07:23 What I want to do is not deny any of these things, put in perspective. Take a look at a community like the United States, which is a community, Com Valley, so and so forth. Has there ever been deep divisions? How did we handle them? So when we take a look as, for example, immigration. Right from the beginning of the founding, there was a dread of migrants. The Scottish Irish that came here were marginalized profoundly and so and so forth. Okay?

Starting point is 01:07:55 along with these evolutions of immigration and so and so forth, which we were built on we needed, okay, there's also tension between those who wanted it and didn't want it. The businessmen want a cheap labor. The others didn't want it. The workers didn't want it. Okay? So we have to enter these from my point of view, and I agree with you absolutely in what's coming.

Starting point is 01:08:23 I simply have a different sense of proportionality that it's not as profoundly serious as we who've never experienced it before would want to make it be. There's precedent for it. There's a manner in which the Americans have historically gone through this by pointing to the Civil War

Starting point is 01:08:42 or simply to point the most extreme situation that even that we recovered from. When was the last time that you saw something he would say was unprecedented? Internally in America, I see a long, long, line of continuum, including the tensions and everything else. But eventually you're using so much artistic license to say, well, you know, this thing

Starting point is 01:09:04 has been, it's analogous to something that's occurred before. Is there a time, like I'm trying to work out when that's not, that cycle hasn't repeated? Well, my point is, before I say this is catastrophic, unprecedented, and so on, I have to look back. Most stable countries go through vast cycles, periods of economic, social unrest. So it's not a smooth flying anywhere, not even Iceland. Do you think it's perfectly normal for a United States president to invade a country with no reason, with no strategy, no plan at all to win the war? I will say, let me see in three months what happens.

Starting point is 01:09:49 First of all, there was a reason. What was the reason? Basically, he keeps going after nuclear material. Why? Because I was on staff at times after 9-11 doing scenarios. What is the worst-case scenario? And it was a nuclear country like Iran getting nuclear weapons, putting them on board of French ship and sailing New York Harbor.

Starting point is 01:10:18 at this point we've had very few casualties on the American side and two days ago a commander of the RGC the very senior commander stood up and said we've got to stop this war the people are not are suffering and everything else all I'm saying about this war is when you're in the middle of it it's extraordinary on the other hand we see one it's been a very short one there's been on the American side, very small losses. You're seeing evolutions in Iran with very

Starting point is 01:10:58 different outcomes. So I simply say, okay, step back from this extraordinary event and ask the questions and then ask, is it really extraordinary? So if the reason was a nuclear weapon, why assassinate it? Why assassinate on the first day, the Atatollah?

Starting point is 01:11:16 Who had a religion? The answer was because he wouldn't, his president, wouldn't listen to intelligence. The head of counterterrorism resigned saying that he will not allow me into his office. He's listening to Israelis. And presidents make massive mistakes. He confused the people there as a government of Iran. He confused it, killed him. That's not the government.

Starting point is 01:11:48 of our energy, IRGC. So on the other hand, it's very important to say, this war has lasted a few months, okay? We are far from understanding how it will end, but that it will end

Starting point is 01:12:01 is certain, and so on. So when I take a look at this, yeah, he did a very stupid thing. He, profoundly, he's not the first president to do some very stupid things. The only thing I'm saying

Starting point is 01:12:15 is that we tend to over react to things when we don't put them in context. How big of the deal is the Iran? Well, it's, it is the biggest deal since going up against Germany and World War II. So Iran is the most difficult challenge we've had since Germany and World War II. So let me give a different window into this. So I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years. And in the modeling of the bombing of Iran, I started do this in 2005.

Starting point is 01:12:45 And here's where I partly agree with George. I do this in 2005 because once it is known that Iran is enriching uranium, that's when the military planning of going against Iran really jacks up. And I know, because I was teaching for the Air Force in the 90s, I had a lot of experience. So from 79 to about 2002, we have political tensions. Yes, we occasionally do a war game. But after 2002 and three, things get much more serious. I start to model the bombing of Iran in 2005. And I did it every year for 20 years.

Starting point is 01:13:18 I did this in my classes at the University of Chicago. And what I'm doing, I lay out the target set. I lay out what, there's all changes. Of course, the target set changes. Fordo comes on. We get the moab. So we get the different technology changes and so forth. But the big thing that the modeling always showed is that once we, meaning America,

Starting point is 01:13:44 bombed the Fordo facility, which only we could do because the Israelis didn't have the large precision ordinance to be able to do it. Once we did that, we would be 90% likely to destroy the centrifuge industrial, the enrichment capability of the facility of Fordo. But we would have virtually no knowledge of whether we destroyed the 60% enriched uranium, the actual fizzle material. And that's critical, Chris, because building a bomb is a piece of cake. Once you have the enriched material, most people don't know that. I also teach my students how to build a bomb. So like take them through the soup to nuts.

Starting point is 01:14:28 So they really understand. It's the fizzle material. And then the modeling, and this is what I told my class, and I have the slides and so forth, and I put them on my substack. And I said, then what would happen is if we bomb Fordow, then a year or two later, we would do regime. change bombing. Not just come back and bomb in general.

Starting point is 01:14:47 We would literally do regime change bombing. And why would you do regime change bombing back to your question? Kind of link and connect all the dots. It's because you would become, once you bomb Fordo, you couldn't track with high confidence the dispersal of that fizzle material. And we know, we have civilian satellites showing that a couple days before we bomb Fordo, stuff's coming out of Fordo. we have civilian satellite showing that Estefan another site in February of this year, a month before we do the bombing.

Starting point is 01:15:21 Iran is digging stuff out. We think that maybe they move the stuff from Fordo to Estefan and now they're digging it out. So this issue of a nuclear weapon, I think, is really quite serious. Now, Israel, I think, is playing a role. But I think it's secondary because they have been arguing to do this for every year for 20 years. What makes the difference here, I believe, was the concern that we couldn't track the fizzle material. And that's still going on to this day. That's why we're worried about pickaxe Mountain, very specific.

Starting point is 01:15:58 So what all that means, Chris, is we're in an escalation trap. The trap didn't just start with killing the leader on February 28. It starts with the bombing of Fordo. And that's the stages I published, literally. several days before we killed the leader. I escalation trap. I laid out the stages of what would come, would kill the leader.

Starting point is 01:16:20 Is it following your predictive game plan thus far? Yes. And that's what's so scary about this. And what I'm really concerned about is we are coming now to a serious stage of the escalation trap that's going to start next week in the following week. So I've been laying out on my substack, the escalation trap, the nightmare scenario,

Starting point is 01:16:43 how this is going to escalate to get worse. And that nightmare scenario, which I started laying out in July, was the rise of gas prices in the United States. Well, I don't know if you've been tracking it, but in Chicago, they're going up. And what that is doing, and what this is doing is it creates the opportunity for Iran to really close and try to shut down Hormuz. Why? so that they can try to damage Trump politically in the midterms to irrevocably destroy his presidency.

Starting point is 01:17:17 And what did I say that was going to do? That was going to energize the Trump administration to start fighting back. And what are we going to see literally tomorrow with Scott Besson is D-Day. Okay. Now, it's an economic D-Day. But that economic D-Day is the Iran's already talking about further escalation. here? If Iran escalates, are we really just going to sit back and say, oh, sure, we're going to, no, there's a real danger. We're in the spiral phase of the escalation trap. As those gas prices

Starting point is 01:17:51 went up, this created a window of maximum leverage for Iran. They're using that maximum leverage to wreck Trump's presidency for the midterms. And I think that what President Trump is doing is trying to figure away to, it's not just how to deal with Iran now, it's what does he do to show he is going to do something as Iran is really doing great damage to our economy and his presidency? We're seeing the collapse of the global economy because for the past 30, 40 years, there's a very simple deal that govern the world, which is that the United States would provide protection to the GCC and to Japan, and in return, Japan and the GCC would buy U.S. treasuries and that was a deal that made the American economy so vibrant. The GCC now has

Starting point is 01:18:42 been destroyed by this war and because Japan gets most of its oil from the GCC, the Japanese yen is weakening, which means that these two regions of the world that provide most of the world's liquidity, especially in the United States, they can no longer do so. So what Scott Besson is worried about is the GCC in Japan can't buy U.S. treasuries. And so what that means is the United States cannot refinance. It's $4,200 debt. This is the apocalypse. This is a catastrophe.

Starting point is 01:19:16 This is not just a short war. We should also take a look at the other side. Iran is experiencing. What is happening in Iran? This is not simply the United States. There's a significant split happening in Iran. A speech the other day made by a major leader said, Look, our people are starving.

Starting point is 01:19:36 We cannot continue this war. Okay? The Artesche is there, which is the secular army. So in other words, look at this war, not just from our side and the consequences to us. See the pain on the other side. Okay? So we assume that the RGC is super powerful,

Starting point is 01:19:54 can continue to do anything it wants, has no resistance. We forget that there was about 20,000 people killed in an uprising before the war. That division is not gone. Iran has been understretched for the past 50 years. It's a poor place. People are used to being poor?

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Starting point is 01:21:07 Are heading to jim.sh slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom 10 at checkout. That's jim.sh slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom 10 a checkout. So for 30 years, I've been studying air power, economic sanctions, blockades. I've focused on American political violence. So again, it's the intersection of these military action and politics. One thing that's very important to know in advance of what Scott Besson is about to tell us is since World War I, not going back before World War I, since World War I, even heavy economic pressure alone, I mean alone without other military force, has never won a major war. never won a major war. All I want, and there's going to be a big substack tomorrow as I put this out,

Starting point is 01:22:01 all I want is I want the reporters at that news conference to ask a very simple question. So the British blockade on Germany in World War I did not defeat Germany, even though it killed over 700,000 German civilians. And we still had to have ground power to end that conflict. So the economic sanctions on Japan before World War I and then during World War II and then during World War II itself did not stop us from bombing its cities using the atomic bomb and then also Russian entry into the war with ground forces. That's how we defeated Japan. If we look at Iraq from 1990 to 2003, it was our American military that kicked Saddam out of Kuwait. And once Saddam was out of Kuwait from 91 to 2003, We had sanctions that crushed the Iraqi economy by 50% each year for all those years. And what did we have to do? 150,000.

Starting point is 01:23:02 You see, you get my point. Every time you speak, I feel like I'm treading on eggs. I'm like, I don't want to know what comes next. Well, now you see what it was like what I taught for the Air Force. It's fucking awful. That's how they describe it, the prison of paper. He gets you in the data. So we can't get out.

Starting point is 01:23:18 We see Iran as a completely united country, no factions and so and so forth. Okay? That's obviously a delusioned because there are always factions and so on and so forth. So I'm not saying that it's economic force, but there were great divisions that we saw before. Those divisions are still there in some ways. So the question is not just the economic consequences, but also the fact that it's very rare to have a country that is totally united in this way, and this is not the country like that.

Starting point is 01:23:53 So, George, the external force is bringing those divisions closer together. They're not breaking them apart. I profoundly disagree. They can sometimes push them together. Sometimes I say, as we didn't have yet on war, I've seen the, all I say is what's the case since World War I? All I need is one case. One case?

Starting point is 01:24:13 One case where our external pressure, our economic pressure, where we had, and again, I just gave you four, and you have another five. I particularly said, and I'm meaning economic pressure. I'm talking about the inherent differences within this vast country. Why does that matter?

Starting point is 01:24:33 It matters because when the attacks start to happen and the pain starts to rise, they become more powerful in the sense that others look at them and say, you were right. This was not the government we should have. So did they not already try and uprise before? Of course.

Starting point is 01:24:51 Of course. No, they killed them all. Now what did these circumstances? Is that going to stop? Well, this is the fundamental question. Okay. And all we need is a case, George. Just give us even a case of bombing.

Starting point is 01:25:04 So let's widen it beyond military pressure. Where is the case that without ground forces, bombing alone wrecked the government? And the answer is that the question, in my mind is not bombing, okay? It is the disunity of the country itself, which we saw the weeks before the war began. Is your suggestion that if Iran had sufficient disunity inside, that the government would choose to give up

Starting point is 01:25:34 because it's got so much pressure happening internally? What I'm saying is the government itself, the statement that was made and was transmitted all over the world by this leader of the IRC, a former head of the IRGC, that we must not continue this. So I'm saying that the, as in Vietnam, the government was, U.S. government was completely frequently divided on what should be done. At least from what I know, a tiny amount I know about Iran, I don't get the sense that the government is going to be too concerned about the quality of life of its citizens to give over to

Starting point is 01:26:09 what Trump's pressures are going to be. Am I right or wrong? All I have is one speech from the former president. That was published. He is still alive, apparently. So when you take a look at a country, take a look at the fragments within our own country, and don't assume that this country is totally united or simply afraid of the regime.

Starting point is 01:26:31 The regime itself is divided. We've seen it. Unless this speech that I saw and everything is translated was made up by something, body, this represents. a significant thing. Now, the Pakistani headed with the military

Starting point is 01:26:51 is coming to talk to the Iranians. He may already be there, okay? There has been talk this morning about Iran being allowed to become part of the entity that was created. In other words, wars don't end because the bombings,

Starting point is 01:27:09 I totally agree with you. They grin through political processes sometimes within countries. totally defeat them but it's we have to be aware that these are human beings they're not all fanatics to ready die well i think there's a difference between do we see all of the citizens of iran as supporting a regime that we are concerned about that might be part of global terrorism or something like that i don't think anybody's making that claim i think the concern is no matter what's going on internally, whether it's divided or cohesive, whether they're in support or against,

Starting point is 01:27:50 like the war is going on from the people at the top of Iran and the people at the top of America, regardless of what the people below that. But somebody who is at top of Iran, this man, made this speech. But he's no longer in power, right? No, he's not in power. He's not in power, but he has tremendous influence. That's what that's, look, here's the, since World War I, starts with Julio Du Hay, he wrote a book, Command in the Air, mostly has to do with air power. There's been a hope with either economic blockades or air power, that air power or blockades without a ground force could incite a popular revolt to topple the government so that we wouldn't want to do it, you do it for us.

Starting point is 01:28:32 Exactly. And this has been a hope. So, no one, I have not talked about toppling the government. I am saying that the government itself is split in various ways. The RGC is not totally unified. As we go into wars, we are not totally unified, and sometimes it's unification. You have to take a look at the internals. So one factor that we need to look at is that right now, the Iranians have chosen to adopt something called the Mozak Defense,

Starting point is 01:29:02 which is a decentralized command and control military warfare, which means that it's entirely possible. no one is in charge of Iran right now. So it doesn't really matter what the people want. It doesn't really matter what the leadership wants because you have 31 commanders spread out all over the country and as long as one wants to keep on fighting and shut off the most women being closed

Starting point is 01:29:28 and this war will continue. That's a problem. Sounds like decentralization, but it might just be leaderlessness in that way. They run the government through consensus. We saw this with the Taliban and Afghanistan. Afghanistan as well. So there's different models for how you govern. Some are very rigid top down. Gaddafi ran his government very rigid top down. That's absolutely the case. Others are more

Starting point is 01:29:54 very, very decentralized, fragmented almost. I don't think that's where Iran is. Iran is in this middle of consensus. And it's hard to see because this is where the Supreme Leader, when he made a statement, remember the MOU? The Supreme Leader made a statement saying that he personally, didn't agree with the MOU, but he was going to give it a chance and support those who did, which meant there was a division, just as George is saying, and that side of getting a negotiated outcome won on June 17th. That has now been replaced, I believe, by the other side, the Supreme Leader's side. And that's what you see with the replacement of the whole command structure of the IRGC in the last several weeks. It's all in one direction. The NU was a major

Starting point is 01:30:41 turning point because before the MOU, I think George is right there were these factions. I agree. And the MOU was a compromise. And what the Americans have shown is for the reason, they will not abide by the terms of the MOU. And so the Iranians at some point said, screw this. We are not going to negotiate. We are not going to compromise. We're going to fight this to the end. So now the Hufi's happened brought into the war. And this war is just expanding very rapidly. What do you think is the likely outcome of the Iran war? It doesn't end. What's going to happen is eventually the Ukraine war and the Iran will merge. Already we're seeing that after Zelensky bombed an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea. And Zelensky was very proud

Starting point is 01:31:28 of this. Like you see I can do this for the Americans. So it is very likely that all the powers are brought are brought in. China is brought into the war. Russia is brought into the war. This sounds a lot like the World War III that we said wasn't going to happen at the top of this episode. Except it's not of world. I didn't say that. Did I say that? No, no.

Starting point is 01:31:50 He actually thinks World War III is kind of coming quickly. Okay. Here's where I would, so I see the trends that Zhang is saying. I don't want to disagree with the trends. I think January of this year is going to be a focal point moment.

Starting point is 01:32:05 January of next year. Of next year. I mean January, 2027 will be a focal point moment where all the actors, the United States, China, Iran, have a chance to reset. Now, where they go, here's what I, but why January? Go back to what I just said, which is Iran has a strategy for the U.S. midterms. It sees the oil inventories running down.

Starting point is 01:32:29 It sees its period of maximum pressure. The opportunity here is to destroy Trump's presidency politically. not to knock him out of office, but so that he is the lamest of lame ducks. Well, will that happen or not? We'll know quite a bit in the first week in January. Now, we won't necessarily know 100%, but we'll know a lot of information. And I believe what's going to happen is once we get to the first week in January, everybody will be recalibrating for a post-Trump world, or a future Trump world.

Starting point is 01:33:08 How do you feel about this? Look, the problem is we're trying to see this from an economic glance. And the reason why the MOU fell apart is Israel refused to abide by the terms. One of the major terms of the MOU signed between the United States and Iran is that all terms, all peace terms that apply to Iran would also apply to Iran's allies, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon. And that required Israel to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. Israel refused to do so, and Israel has only accelerated its attacks on Hezbollah. So we think that it's entirely between the United States and Iran, but Israel has a lot of options. And right now, for a reason, we can discuss this, Israel is choosing to escalate the war.

Starting point is 01:34:01 And also, the hoofies have been brought in. And the thing about the hoofies is that they are religious fanatics. They are very poor people. They live in mountains, and they're not afraid to die. And right now, they're fighting this war against Saudi Arabia. So Saudi Arabia, Aramical facilities are being hit. The other strait in the Middle East, the Bab al-Mandad Strait, has been closed by the Houthis. So we're seeing this war escalate.

Starting point is 01:34:29 And again, we're trying to see this from economic lens. But if you look at what the Houthis are doing, if you look at what the IRC and the Israelis are doing, I would say this is almost like a religious war. It's a crusade. It's an eschatological war. But there's another dimension we have to see. The alliance between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Now if you take a look at a map, all around them, these countries,

Starting point is 01:34:55 Saudi Arabia has no use for Iran. The Turks are seeking to evolve themselves into a major point, scurring the Israelis to death. And Pakistan itself is evolving dramatically in this war into a very sophisticated state. So when you take a look at the situation of Iran, let's not just talk about the bombing and everything, but the geopolitical development. Now, today there was a story, I don't know if it's true or not, that Iran is going to be asked to join this coalition. In other words, submit, whether they do it or not, whether this is an actual offer, I have no idea.

Starting point is 01:35:35 But it was there. But this created a new structure in the Middle East, this alliance, a very different one with a very powerful country. Israel is terrified of Turkey because they know they do. It's not. It just bombed. Turkish officials in Syria. Yes, and that was part of it, because this is a country they cannot defeat. they've only fought countries along their borders

Starting point is 01:36:06 and they were able for since the founding of Israel to hold those borders the Turkish army is three times as large as the Israeli army and while I don't believe did the Turks really have any desire to fight them these Israeli

Starting point is 01:36:27 shall we say society is built around a commitment to the the belief that they're going to try to destroy us. There is a built-in paranoia. So when this end, you know, this problem ends a little bit, they bomb Syria. They then tell the American ambassador they didn't bomb Syria. Then they say, Turkey is our greatest fear built into Israel. by history is a paranoia.

Starting point is 01:37:06 Who is my greatest enemy? I have one. Now they're facing for the first time an enemy that they cannot because of both geography and military capability defeat. All right? Now, when Rundsen was asked what to do after the battle of bulges,

Starting point is 01:37:25 he said, make peace, you fools. And this is the situation that Israel is in. It's an internal crisis. It has reached a point where its military capability is not enough. So the reason I think the midterms are a decisive threshold. I agree. Not just a minor threshold, is it will determine whether the Democrats control Congress. If the Democrats control Congress, which is still an if, but we'll know in January,

Starting point is 01:37:55 there is going to be two things that are going to happen. And we see this in the Democratic policies already. Number one is there'll be tremendous pressure to literally end the Iran war. So we saw this in 1974 by Congress. Congress has not played much of a role in foreign policy. The last time it got involved was 74 with Vietnam to truly constrain the executive. There'll be a battle about this, of course. But number one is the Democrats wanting to shut down this, and that would stop it from becoming a forever war.

Starting point is 01:38:26 One more point, and then I'll let you. The second point is they're going to want to constrain Israel. There's a huge push in the Democratic Party to shut down all of the, look at all the Democrats that are, that were pro-Israel that are losing. And they're losing because there's a huge movement inside of the Democratic Party to zero out the budgets to Israel. And that means that come January. Israel is going to have to calibrate

Starting point is 01:38:58 Iran. Others are going to calibrate based on the results of whether the Democrats control Congress. Now, we don't know whether the Democrats will control Congress. But what I'm saying is it's too soon to truly project out beyond January because come January will know, are we in a forever war? And by the way,

Starting point is 01:39:18 if the Democrats, even though they control Congress, support the war, oh yeah, we're in a forever war. So which major Democratic leader has come out against the war and which leader has said we must end this war right now? Which leader? Oh, geez, almost all of them. I mean, just watch CNN. They come on all the time. So what they are, if you listen, Zhang, to the Democratic, no, if you listen to the Democratic leaders, this has just been a mantra to end the Vietnam War.

Starting point is 01:39:48 I'm sorry, to end the Iran war. and the real question is going to be, Zhang, whether or not, once they control, will it take responsibility for that? Because right now, it's easy to run against the Iran war because gas prices going up, you know, bad mistakes by the Trump administration, which they hate anyway. Where it will become difficult will be once the Democrats assume power, because if it turns out, that the Democrats stop the war and Iran gets a nuclear weapon. Think about that for the Democratic Party. That could bring the Republicans right back in in 2028. So I think these are the real issue.

Starting point is 01:40:32 And that's why it's about not just what you claim you're going to do, but what you do when you're in power. So I must have missed the news, but can you name me one major Democratic leader with it's Chuck Schumerer? Well, Hakeem Jeffries was just on CNN, I think it was three days ago, arguing that the war should end now. I just listened to the woman who just ran the progressive who just won the Senate for the Senate seat in the primary here on Ford. I was just on a podcast with her on the Joy Reid show just two days ago talking about this issue.

Starting point is 01:41:04 And she was hugely against the war and thought it was a total mistake and it should end. So, I mean, those are always two people right there. So how can Jeffrey say that if the Democrats were, worked in the House in November, they would immediately try to restrict Trump's war powers and try to... I haven't said anybody has gone that far. That's the next step. That's the real issue here. And that's what I'm saying is you won't be able to know whether they'll do it until they're in power, Zhang.

Starting point is 01:41:37 And if they're in power and they support the war for fear that they will lose their political viability as Hillary Clinton was worried about with the Iraq war, then this will... That's how you got a forever war. You get both parties in favor of the war because neither one will stop it. Now you have a forever war. But in this particular case, both the Republicans oppose the war because that's one of the bases on which you won the election was not to get into these forever wars. The Democrats also are doing it where you take a look at the poll numbers on this war. They're enormously unpopular.

Starting point is 01:42:15 Congress tends to do what's popular and ending the war is popular not only in the Democrats but with the Republicans this is the fundamental difference that I've never seen which is that his own party feels betrayed so I think there's one of the things I think the Iranians are saying

Starting point is 01:42:35 let's wait let's wait to see if they come apart the same way I'm talking about Iran having internal problems we have enormous internal problems I'm seeing the Iranians trying to put this off as long as possible and then try to make a deal in September or October before the elections. It's so fascinating that Trump's positioning and his desire to be seen as a competent president and obviously the last couple of years of his legacy, that is being used as a geopolitical tool. that's almost a weapon that other people can insert themselves into

Starting point is 01:43:17 because they know that this is going to be, it's a point of weakness or it's a point of leverage that can be used to play with the incentives that the U.S. has got. Do they want to push further? Do they want to pull back? This is something I've seen in, again, advised four White Houses, 2001 to 24, two Democrat, two Republican.

Starting point is 01:43:39 Legacy matters to, let's call it the White House. if not the president. I also think the president, but let's just make it, legacy is beyond just getting the next win. Legacy is what you're remembered for. And I think this is what is important that we miss when we talk about presidents in the United States. We think, well, you can't run for re-election again. Therefore, you don't care anymore about anything. No, I think what I see is even in their first term, they're thinking about, their legacy going forward. And that legacy, there have only been 47 presidents

Starting point is 01:44:21 in our history. There's not that many presidents. Not a big sample size. So I really, well, it's not that. It's that they know they're one of 47 or 48. It's the other way around, Chris. It's because it's a tiny club. Their legacy is going to be with them

Starting point is 01:44:36 after they're dead for 100 years plus. But if he's so worried about his legacy, why did he attack Iran the first place? place. I think again, back to the modeling. I'm just going to keep going back to the modeling, because I made a prediction to my classes for 20 years in a row that once we bomb Fordo, but why? We would panic about Iran getting a nuclear weapon in a way we couldn't see, and we would get intel, whether it's Israel or somebody else, that was showing us they were getting intelligence, and we would try to resolve it through regime change. Not because,

Starting point is 01:45:14 regime change was magically thought to be a better strategy, but it was really the only way you could come up with even a half plausible idea. Was your question about why to do the bombing in the first place, though? So I wouldn't- Take a step back from- Yeah, yeah. I want to present another theory, okay, besides your modeling. But please.

Starting point is 01:45:32 So 1996 is a clean break memo, right? And you probably know the people who wrote that, right? Richard Pearl. That was very- Paul Wolf was from my department, Zhang. Okay, all right. 71 PhD University of Chicago. So I know these people pretty well.

Starting point is 01:45:46 So just for some context. For the idiot in the room, thank you. Yeah, the Klimbic Memor was a proposal to Benjamin Nanyahu. And the argument is that Israel under Nanyahu should withdraw from the Oslo Peace Accords. Because in order to assure peace in the Middle East, Israel had to be strong. It had to conduct regime change in Iraq and Syria. Also, Israel needed to be self-sufficient. Economically and militarily,

Starting point is 01:46:19 it needs to basically stop being dependent on the United States. If you want to resolve the Palestinian issue, then you beat the crap out of them. Rather than try to compromise and give them the land, that would just make them more greedy. Instead, you establish peaceful strength. Those were the exact terms, peaceful strength.

Starting point is 01:46:37 So that's the 1996 Clean Brick Memo. Why that's important is, if you look at the clean brick memo and you look at today, they basically implemented every single point of the clean big memo, right? Every single point, that's number one. Number two is, what's interesting is the people responsible for the clean brick memo, Richard Pearl, Douglas Five, went on to work in the Bush administration, and they were along with Paul Wolfe, which, your friend, the architects... No, my friend.

Starting point is 01:47:03 No, no, no, no, no, that's going too far. But the three of them, okay? The three of them in the Pentagon were the architects of the Iraq War. right and then uh after 9-11 wesley clark appears on stage with amy goodman and uh emma gudman's like what's a plan and wesley clark is like we're going to go after seven nations in five years and these seven nations include iraq uh syria libya Lebanon uh Sudan samalia and there's one more iran so if i'm just looking at it from like a like top-down from bird's eye view, I would say that this was always a plan ever since 9906,

Starting point is 01:47:48 a Kling Brook Memo, to attack Iran eventually, because they've been saying this for the past 30 years. And so it's not a good reason to attack Iran? So that was always the plan. So let me, first of all, number one, I agree with your characterization of the Kareem break plan. Number two, I agree it was a plan. What I see from 2005 on, and I was working with the Bush administration about how to essentially calm down the Iraq War. So I had many, many interactions here with the Bush administration because I was warning before we did Iraq that we would touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times. We did invade Iraq.

Starting point is 01:48:32 We did touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign of modern times. And who started my center at the University of Chicago, the Chicago Project? used to be on suicide terrorism. It was actually the Bush administration. Think about that for a moment. Because suddenly, somebody made a unique prediction. None of other terrorism expert was predicting that. And I gave it directly to Paul Wolfowitz here.

Starting point is 01:48:55 He did Iraq anyway. It touched it off anyway. And so now suddenly I'm engaging with them. We never put an army in a certain African country. Think Somalia. That was a possibility. that did not happen. Certain things that did not happen also are important to know.

Starting point is 01:49:14 So one of the things that happened during this period after the Iraq war became a disaster is all that influence by Wolfowitz left, Fife left, Pearl left, and it's because it became widely understood what the real dangers were of going into Iran. I mean, Iraq was already a problem, but Iran is a problem. much bigger, I said, the biggest challenge since Germany in World War II. This was widely understood at the time. And it's widely understood by the military. It's widely understood in both Democrat and Republican White House. This is not a unique situation here. I think you really run into an issue with why did President Trump bomb Fordot? So I've talked to the people from the

Starting point is 01:50:08 administration who have left in detail about this in May, I think you have to understand one thing, which is, although President Trump decided to reject Netanyahu in his first administration, President Trump has become his own national security advisor, his own Secretary of Defense, his own Secretary of State. If you look at all the decisions that are happening, everybody else is essentially executing his policies, and occasionally he'll get mad at them and blame them for something. But he's not really following closely the advice of any of those people around him. I think what's happening is that our system gives the president inordinate discretion

Starting point is 01:50:58 when it comes to the use of force. You're saying that this was a personal bias and a whim. I think it was, yes, largely so, but I would say it's because, I would say that what you're seeing here is that this style of president, what, it doesn't matter. If he fires Pete Heggseth next week or he fires Scott Besson next week, do we really think the style of the president is going to change? I think that we need to understand that we, in our system of government, we have given inordinate power to the president. I'm not going to. I'm not. calling for a change of the Constitution, but I am saying that that means if the president wakes up one day and- and press the button, and by the way, there's famous Abraham Lincoln, famous story in Doris Corrin Goodwin's of a team of rivals where Abraham Lincoln goes around the table, asks the entire cabinet, and they all say, no, no, no, no, no, and they come to the, and Lincoln's, and Lincoln says,

Starting point is 01:51:57 I, and gentlemen, the eyes have it. So this is what happened. What does Trump have against Iran? he can't even find you around on a map I mean he can't I guarantee you he cannot do it well look I think we've pushed I like to talk to people directly I've never in this case everybody I've talked to who's been around this

Starting point is 01:52:22 who've actually briefed the president on this they only go so far and willing to say why he did certain things and I'm saying it's because of the way he has chosen to make his decisions. There's not the process we're used to seeing here. So what that would mean is, and I've never talked to President Trump, is unless I could actually talk to Trump, I won't go further than I've currently said.

Starting point is 01:52:46 Because I do think that this is, though, how we got here. And once he did Fordow, I don't know that at all he understood the consequences, but I think then he was sunk, Zhang, because once he did that and he sees the satellite imagery I'm seeing in the civilian world and there's probably more. He knows if they develop, if they test nukes on his watch, man, he's sunk for all of history. What's your psychoanalysis of? So let's just look at his pattern of behavior in his both his first term and the second term, right? First time he comes to office, he he cancels the JCPOA, which is the Iran nuclear deal under Obama, right? He's like, we're not doing this

Starting point is 01:53:26 anymore, guys. That's number one. Then he recognizes, so, Then what he does is he transfers the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is one of the most provocative acts an American president has ever done in the Middle East. You don't do that. Okay, that's number two. Number three is he recognizes Israel's control of the Golden Heights. Then the most dramatic thing he does is in January 2020, he orders the assassination of General Kasam Salamani,

Starting point is 01:53:55 who was Iran's de facto ambassador in the Middle East. So Fardot just seemed a logical extension of his actions. He is the most pro-Israel president the United States has ever had. It seems like if you just look at the clean brick memo of 1996 and you look at what Trump is doing in the Middle East, it seems like he is trying to create the Greater Israel Project. Sorry, do you know what the Greater Israel Project is? Right.

Starting point is 01:54:25 So the Greater Israel Project is the idea that Israel should occupy all biblical lands or the lands that Yahweh, God promised to Abraham. And these lands extend from Egypt, sorry, extend from the Nile in Egypt, all the way to Euphrates in Iraq. So if you look at the entire map of what the United States has been doing for the past 20 years, attacking Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now this war, which promised to engulf Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan. It seems like this is all to achieve the greater Israel project. I believe. But if he was only interested in Israel, why Venezuela, why Greenland, why Canada.

Starting point is 01:55:15 What I see- Well, what I'm just, what I'm pointing out, when I'm pointing, so I agree with you, that's the second most important reason, Israel. I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all. I think that what we need to see is that, first of all, President Trump is really enthralled with the use of violence, enthralled with the use of violence. He's part and parcel of violent populism. He's both a cause and a symptom of it at the same time.

Starting point is 01:55:41 And it's not just in the... In his first term, he did not start a war. Well, he kept his promise, I will not start a new war. And violent, and after January 6th, I think the process leading up to January 6th. And then in chapter 5 of the book, I trace this out, that in aftermath of January 6th, January 6th, this has radicalized MAGA. MAGA is not the same sort of group, political movement. But we're talking about international policy, not just internal culture.

Starting point is 01:56:07 Yes, but once you have normal, once political violence is normal for you at home, it's a lot easier to use it abroad. He was in office from way before 2020. Well, what I'm trying to tell you is that it, it, there's a, there's a trajectory that's emerging. It's not that he comes in planning on, you know, 2017 to do January 6th. There is a trajectory that emerges. And I think that we need to see that, yes, Israel's playing a role, but there's a lot more that he is doing.

Starting point is 01:56:35 So you think the number one reason is this escalating acceptance? Normalization of political violence. It is the thing that is underneath. But there's something else to look at. I think there is also in Trump a fear of a 9-11. And there's in ways it should be, okay? So when you take a look at Iran and their relationship with al-Qaeda ruined but still there, something comes to mind at times, which is what would happen if instead of 9-11 happening with aircraft,

Starting point is 01:57:11 a ship sailed in with a nuclear weapon to New York Harbor and detonated. So given the ideology of Iran, given the fact that they have nuclear materials and the presence of al-Qaeda, we can say all the various things we say about Trump in various ways, and I agree with much of them, there's also a rational fear that can involve. This is why his fundamental demand has been the nuclear weapons. Now, he attacked them first, he claimed it succeeded, it failed, okay? And we really don't know, I think, for sure, where the nuclear capabilities are. We don't know how to destroy them and we're looking at that. But I think that underneath it, if you take a look at the question of what happens if there's a nuclear weapon, especially the secret one, developed in Iran,

Starting point is 01:58:08 given the ideology, what might happen. And I think in many ways, when you look at, you know, how we will be viewed in history, if I remember from that, if that were allowed to happen under his watch, would he also driving him. Do you think the JCPOA was working? It didn't fail.

Starting point is 01:58:32 What it was working is another matter. The fundamental thing was to denuclearize these areas. So if Trump is most concerned about Iran developing nuclear weapon,

Starting point is 01:58:45 why did it withdraw from the JCPOA? Because he wanted more control, I think. I have no idea what has been through his mind. He wanted to have

Starting point is 01:58:54 direct control on that. He thought that would be more effective. When you take a look at his practices, okay? He clearly doesn't go through reliance systems, it doesn't want to have dependence on others. He wants that power at his own hand.

Starting point is 01:59:09 He can't have it. He does it as well. I don't, I can't psychoanalyze him, but what I see happening is that, and this is something I wrote on and proved a slogan about, the fundamental fear was the nuclear 9-11. and he keeps coming back to that.

Starting point is 01:59:27 So if he was, if you were afraid of a nuclear weapon, he should have avoided three things, okay? Yeah. One is withdraw from the JCPOA. Second is, do not assassinate the Alito Kamanai because he refused to ever use a nuclear weapon. And number three is do not attack Iran. And Trump did all three things.

Starting point is 01:59:47 Yes, but that doesn't mean that the operational action didn't have a certain end in mind. So in other words, it was rational to be concerned about it, he proceeded irrationally in action. Yes, and I think the choice set is interesting here. So I agree, by the way, with George that there's a rational fear of a nuclear weapon with Iran. There is an element of a rational fear of that. I think we can learn to live with it, by the way.

Starting point is 02:00:16 So I don't think it means that once you're concerned about an Iranian nuclear weapon, the solution is the force direct. And I certainly agree with that. But yeah, I thought you might. But let me say that what we saw with the JCPOA was not just that Trump ripped up the JCPOA, but he replaced it with a maximum pressure campaign. So what President Trump has done very often in his career, and this is what I would say is, and this is before January 6th, but he has, there's a trajectory here,

Starting point is 02:00:46 which is he is more and more comfortable with force domestically and internationally as he goes through his presidencies, his two presidencies. And that's what I mean by the normalization of it. It becomes more normal because he didn't just rip it up the JCOPA. He thought a pressure campaign would be better. And I think that he learned from that failure, because it didn't stop Iran, that he should have more pressure. A lot of others of us would say you should learn from that

Starting point is 02:01:20 by seeing that the pressure campaign is making things worse. And I think that this is what we're seeing with our president. He finds a lot of comfort in the use of political violence. He also doesn't really understand power. He overestimates what he has. He went into that war expecting it to be readily done. He did not understand the mosaic system. He did not care about responses.

Starting point is 02:01:48 So one of the problems have, I don't necessarily disagree with pressure as a measure. He doesn't understand how to apply the pressure, nor does he have a clear understanding of just how much power he has. My question is, if this is just complete chaos, if this is this one guy behaving irrationally, why all events helping to create the greater issue project? That's my question.

Starting point is 02:02:16 Well, and my challenge to you is that, Explain the Western Hemisphere. Because if you really want to build the greater Israel project and you look out here over time, what you would like is you'd like President Trump completely focused on the Middle East. And yet President Trump starts out with his tariffs, which is not quite violent, but again, very aggressive

Starting point is 02:02:38 against our own allies. Then he moves to actual military ideas with Greenland and our allies, Canada. And so what he's doing, Zhang is, it's not that I just, again, I want to be very clear, I think that Israel is the second most important driver here. This is where I just, I think also with the 2003 Iraq War, some of the people I most respect in the world believe the number one reason we did the Iraq war in 2003 was Israel. I think it's what happened after 9-11. I think 9-11 created an enormous

Starting point is 02:03:15 fear of Muslims in the United States, including with the people at the very top. It wasn't only Israel. Right. So one thing that people don't appreciate about the Great Industrial Project is the major impediment to that thing is actually the U.S. military. Because the U.S. military provides balance of power in the Middle East.

Starting point is 02:03:35 The U.S. military provides protection to the GCC. So if Israel were to become the dominant nation, it would need a way to remove the United States from the equation, right? And this Iran war, it is a solution to this problem. Because if the American standing ground troops, which is part of the escalation trap, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then there's, then the United States would probably lose this war. And the United States would be forced to withdraw back into the Western Hemisphere.

Starting point is 02:04:03 Hang on. Are you saying that Israel managed to convince Trump to go into Iran to do the bomb, which then gets into the escalation trap, which means that you need to put boots on the ground, which means that America ultimately loses, which means that America, then has to withdraw to make room for Israel. I do not know if this was intentional. I don't know if this plan, but it's turning out this way. But if you're right, John, if you're right, then, and I did a piece on my professor

Starting point is 02:04:30 Pape substack on this, what will happen if America truly, truly withdraws is a much smaller Israel. I think it becomes a nuclear sparta. It doesn't quite get wiped off the map, but a much smaller. Yeah, Israel is much weak. What if Israel took over Sancom? What if all of America's military apparatus, the planes, the troops, all then became under the control of Israel, which is happening right now, right? Because you have debisification right now in the Middle East, which means that all these planes, all this weaponry is now forced to go to Israel because it's the only safe space.

Starting point is 02:05:12 Under that hypothetical, I agree with you. But what you see with, let's take the Democratic Party, and about a third of the Republican Party is they're not having that. So what you see is as that, exactly your scenario, by the way, is one of the big reasons why there's been so much anger against Israel. So there's two actors or two actors that are getting blamed for this war in Iran, which is wrecking the world's economy. It's number one, President Trump, and number two, it's Israel. And both of those are in deep trouble as we go forward. And the Israel's in trouble with the American public. Israel is losing the American public in droves.

Starting point is 02:05:53 Israel is losing profoundly because Israel has always faced enemies that it could defeat. With this alliance that occurred, with Turkey evolving, Israel is much too weak to do this. Therefore, Israel has to change its fundamental strategy, which to face it. the fact that it's a small country, in an area that doesn't welcome it, make peace, try to find ways to enter it. So when Israel takes a look at this alliance that was formed, there are two ways to look at it. One, it might restrain non-state actors. Other, it is a massive alliance that threatens Israel. So at this point, Israel is making very strange sounds like, you know, we're going to do something about Turkey. They can't do it. This is a situation in which Israel has not

Starting point is 02:06:47 found itself in, where it does not have the military power to deal with a threat. So you look at this from two sides. One, yes, I think the Israelis manipulated Trump's thinking. That was very clear. At the same time, Netanyahu has made massive mistakes in overestimating his influence and his power. Do you think Congress will pass the NDAA, which will allow Israel to access data and intelligence from the U.S. military? Not if the Democrats take Congress. I can't imagine that happening.

Starting point is 02:07:22 Not if the Democrats. And I don't even think if the Democrats don't, because I think that this is, and you've been part of the reason that your attention, bringing this attention on social media, I think it's been very important, Zhang. Because I think that the more sunlight that falls on that, the much less likely, this is to happen. Israel's grand strategic problem from the beginning, and to this day is it is seven million Jews surrounded by three. Nine million, I think. Well, nine million, seven million Jews. Yeah, sorry. You've got two million who don't. That's right. That's right. Seven million Jews.

Starting point is 02:07:59 That is 71 miles wide. Well, hold it's the widest point. Yeah, but seven million Jews surrounded by three to four hundred million Muslims, depending on how far you out, you want to. count with Pakistan. So that ratio, the only way you can have Israel the greater project, is with American power. So if you have American power withdraw completely from the Middle East with the way Iran wants it to be, and that may end up being the outcome, then Israel's in deep trouble. If they can't stop Iran now and those missiles coming into Iran now, with America's presence still there? What's going to happen a year or two from now when there's no military from America there? Israel, those seven million are going to be on their own up against those three to four hundred

Starting point is 02:08:51 million. I don't think this means Israel, by the way, gets wiped off the face of the map, but I do think it becomes at least a set, it'll be a second tier power at best. Israel was successful in wars. it gave it an illusion of power. What is evolving now geopolitically in the Middle East is terrifying to the Israelis, particularly with the rise of Turkey. At the same time, the United States now wants to withdraw from these various conflicts

Starting point is 02:09:22 and even wants to reduce its reliability on Israel as well. And there's movements in the United States in the public and also in strategists and stuff. The fundamental crisis in Israel is one that the Americans can't solve because the American public is not going to go that deeply into it. But there is the possibility of accommodation by Israel. Now Netanyahu does not believe in accommodation and believes he must use force in all cases. He can't. Now, he's had a peace treaty with Egypt for many years and it's held. The theory that

Starting point is 02:10:02 that no agreement with the Arabs will ever be honored. In this particular case, he's wrong because of Egyptians did. Certainly Saudi Arabia has nothing hostile to Israel. They've been quietly working with them on intelligence matters and a range of things. Pakistan has no fundamental interest in Israel. And Turkey really has many bigger fish to fry as it evolves than Israel. than Israel. At the same time,

Starting point is 02:10:35 Israel does not know how not to call attention on itself. It somehow always gets into it because its grand strategy has been, since its founding, always attack, be stronger than the other guy, but they've reached a point

Starting point is 02:10:49 where they're not, and they won't be. So the question is, how does Israel evolve in this situation, along with how does the American relationship with Israel evolve?

Starting point is 02:11:00 Very deep questions. for these areas. But I think you're absolutely right that Israel is at the heart of this as a problem. But at this point, it's profoundly weakening, hour by hour almost. Why is it that Israel's got so much influence over the UN? Oh, money.

Starting point is 02:11:17 It's money, it's APEC. This is in the Israel lobby, John Mearsheimer and Steve Waltz book. They lay it out. And it's fundamentally, it's a very simple story, which is that although anybody can give money to elections, It's a free and open process. It just turns out, if you look at all the data, that Jews as a group give more money than any other group per capita.

Starting point is 02:11:42 And as a group overall, about a third of all money in elections is coming from Jewish America. There is a very different reason. During a Cold War, the Soviets had relations with Syria, relationships with Egypt, and so on. The Cold War was fought there as well. When the Arabs attacked Israel in 1973, it was with Soviet weapons, Soviet training, many cases of Soviet tactics imposed. Israel at that point was one of the few countries that was pro-American, and who had a strategic point that it could undermine Egypt, it could undermine these things. So remember, ever since the Suez Crisis, the Soviets had gotten involved in it. The Cold War is over now.

Starting point is 02:12:35 These are not relevant to this thing. But it's not simply money or something like that. That was there too. But that when in the Cold War, you take a look at the situation that the Russians had and the amount of influence that had, even in Lebanon and so on and so forth, destabilizing it. It was deeply involved in the region. and the United States didn't have very firm a lie. It had Iran as an ally, had Israel as a lie, and they were players.

Starting point is 02:13:04 So that situation is obsolete. The Soviets are now there, and so it's irrelevant. So to answer your question, why Israel has someone's power, there's an alliance between Zionist capital, basically APEC, as well as Christian evangelicals, which is about a quarter of the population. Among these Christian evangelicals, maybe a minority are Christian Zionists,

Starting point is 02:13:34 and they believe that Israel is God's plan to save the world. So Israel has to be protected on all costs. So you have this massive alliance between Zionist capital, and then you have these fanatical Christian evangelicals. So one of the most powerful organizations in the United States is something called Christians United for Israel, run by someone named John Haji, and about 7 million members. And all they care about it is Israel. So if you're a congressman, you're saying anything bad about Israel,

Starting point is 02:14:06 you have millions of people literally calling you up every single day bitching at you. Like literally. These are the people who are funding the West Bank settlers, and they are the main cause of friction between the Israelis and the Israelis and the, the Arabs because these West Bank settlers are just complete nuts sold. They're crazy. So you say that, okay, in November, the issue lobby will be taught a lesson. But if you got like this alliance in place, right, between Zionist capital, and we're talking like a lot of money, right, they put in like $30 million to defeat Thomas Mass in Kentucky. They put in $70 million

Starting point is 02:14:48 to defeat Abdul al-Sayyat in Michigan. That's a lot of money for a primary, right? They almost have access to unlimited capital. They have someone like Larian David Ellison who is able to buy up CBS News and install Barry Weiss. So this alliance is almost unprecedented in American politics. So I don't see how just discuss with Israel can negate the power of,

Starting point is 02:15:18 of the issue. Well, you're seeing that Jewish representatives running for Congress are losing right and left. And also the, so it's not just whether they are Jews running for the American Congress, whether they are the Christian Zionists running for the Congress. And one of the big things that's underneath that is that there is a large movement among the right. So most of the evangelicals are on the right. They're not on the left. They're not Democrats. They're They're conservatives. Many of the folks supporting, say, Tucker Carlson, Joe Ken has run for office several times. They are folks that are extremely unhappy with the role of Israel in driving the foreign wars as they see it.

Starting point is 02:16:05 I see it as a secondary factor. They agree with Yu-Jang that it's a number one factor. And what they're doing is they're voting the bums out. They're literally voting the bums out and replacing them with new people who they, think are going to zero out the money for Israel. And I think they're going to hold those people to account. They want Israel's money to be zeroed out. Not realizing that the primary use of Israel is obsolete. Syria does not have Russian bases, Soviet basis. Egypt is not a Soviet power, potentially blocking the Suez Canal and so on and so forth. So Israel is once

Starting point is 02:16:47 a vital asset for the United States under the circumstances. Surely, as long as Israel has money, it's a vital asset for the United States. No, the answer is a lot of countries have far more money than Israel is. Can they put it into American politics as easily as Israel can? If that was the only thing that was doing it, that would be true. On the other hand, if you go back to the Cold War and how desperate it was, the relationship between the U.S. and Israel doesn't, isn't, based on money and nobody challenges it because the Soviets are so powerful there.

Starting point is 02:17:22 The reason this is happening now, this anger against Israel, is not just it's another forever war. It's because this is the war that's hurting the American pocketbook in a serious way. If you go back since 1991, and you can even go back further, but if listeners will just go back to 1991 and call up on Google and say, give me a chart of annual GDP growth or decline in the United States since 1991 to today. They're going to see some great patterns. They're going to see number one GDP growth goes down during the 2007, say, housing crisis. COVID, but it does not go down during the Gulf War in 91. It does not go down in Kosovo. It does not go down in 2003 when we invade Iraq. It does not go down during the Forever Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Starting point is 02:18:15 This war is different. And the reason it's different is not just it's another war in a long period of time. It's different because this is the war that Americans are feeling it in their pocketbook for real. So if it is a case that the American public is churning against Israel, and I certainly hope so, how did Thomas Massey, who was one of the most ardent anti-Israel, voices in Congress. Trump went after him in a big way. You got the, so Trump, Trump targeted Massey. And he targeted Marjorie Taylor Green.

Starting point is 02:18:50 He targeted Massey. And when you're targeted by Trump, and we know this most from Marjorie Taylor Green, this means assassination attempts against you and your kids and your families. So this isn't just a small, this isn't just a political targeting we're talking about. So, so let's summarize what you're saying. Number one is you believe money. has a significant impact on American politics. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 02:19:14 And Zionists have a lot of money to scan. Okay, that's number one. Number two is Trump is very powerful within the Republican Party. So if he targets you, whether you be Thomas Massey or MTG, you will lose. Right, but I think Trump's influence is waning.

Starting point is 02:19:34 I think it's up for grabs between now and January. That's what I'm saying, and it's what's driving the escalation trap, his desire to hold on. on to power is what's really driving the escalation trap between now and January. And I am willing to, I definitely agree it's an uphill battle because of all the money and all the sort of, you know, institutionalization as you are explaining it. That's all true. However, that can crumble

Starting point is 02:19:58 within a period of just a couple of years. I don't think this idea that that it will take five or 10 years. In fact, by 2028, I'm expecting there will be a candidate for the Democratic presidency of the United States that will be avowedly anti-Zionist, not just kind of on the edges. And I think this is just that's what they'll almost run on. I think at least one person because, yes, almost run on because somebody's going to be blamed for all the wreckage of this Iran war. And who are you going to Blame. Why wouldn't you just blame Trump? Because Trump will already be toast by that point. You're going to, this, this wreckage is going to go on for a while. You need an active candidate that you can tell. We don't, we're not going to be done blaming people because, you know, Iran.

Starting point is 02:20:50 So this Iran war is one of the biggest messes in modern history. It's the biggest mess. It's the biggest mess since we have had in our country. In this short time. Since, since really all the go back to all the way World War I. There's no bigger... Biggest mess in 100 years. Yes. Not because of the casualty. So we're used to... Well, it's basically been, at least on... It's the economic consequences that are so big. And as you're hearing, and I agree with his economic analysis here, he's talking about massive economic...

Starting point is 02:21:20 The clap ball of economy. Oh, my gosh. It's massive. And I hope he's wrong. I mean, this is where I'm predicting the escrow. You're predicting the other. And I think we each hope the other is not quite right. But I have really concerned. with his analysis because I can't chip away. I brought Jeff Curry on my substack to do these, you know, sort of like what you do here, here, because I think he's just an amazing economist and so forth. He's right there.

Starting point is 02:21:47 I mean, so he's right with him. Can you, can I like to say? Okay. I agree this will be the biggest price if it doesn't end. If it ends, it'll become like those other wars that we've had in past. goes on. The fundamental question is, how does it end? How could it end? And so and so forth. We don't understand, I don't understand fully the nature of political systems in Russia or in Iran and how they continue the wars. So before we're ready to say this is the biggest disaster,

Starting point is 02:22:26 I would say, yes, if it continues, it will certainly be that. So far, it has not created the kind of crisis in the United States, for example, that Vietnam did, by far. So it's a question of how does this end? How long would it have to go on for, if it goes on for another year? Would you say it's the biggest crisis? I have no way to see it because I don't know the consequences, nor do I know how to forward the thought, or what will have the Straits of Ramos and so on.

Starting point is 02:22:56 So if they were in the Straits of Ramos and so on, if they were secured and the war went on, it might have one path and there's another path. Trump, don't you see, George, that Trump's effort to end the war quickly with a victory for Trump is what is likely to create the Pyrrhic victory that's going to go on and on? The answer is, I probably agree with you, but I'm not certain because I'm not certain about how Iran is evolving. So I agree with you certainly that if this war continues, the consequences will be massive. I also agree with you that Trump will have a great deal of difficulty ending it on his own terms. But there's a variable there that we have to take seriously.

Starting point is 02:23:43 The internal capabilities are end. We do have to put some probabilities between now and November, which is what, 75 days? I think between now and November to expect Iran to implode, which is possible. I would say possible, but I wouldn't even give it a 10% chance between now and November. I think they're using the election to try to force Trump into a position that he has to end it, even by making massive concessions. We agree. There we agree.

Starting point is 02:24:13 So the likelihood of Trump voluntarily ending it? Well, I think this without more, right? 0%. Yeah. I think that what you're seeing is the opposite. He is more likely to use force, or, and it's starting with economic force, to get a symbolic victory. and I don't think Iran is going to play their part. Iran is just not willing to give him the victory that he can,

Starting point is 02:24:37 yeah, they're giving him the middle figure. So in the same way that we say Trump doesn't have the power to do these things, we have to take a look at power of Iran as well. So one of the things that Trump wants is to end the war and not be a crippled president above all else. Iranians seem to be operating, trying to push it out, Now, come October, he can't, the president cannot make a deal. They're trying to force him into a position in negotiation and they're succeeding because he understands he's going to lose power if he continues this.

Starting point is 02:25:17 So now we ask the question psychologically that I can't answer. Trump care more about remaining powerful as president or more about beating the Iranians because he started the war and he wanted to be successful. I have no idea which way he goes. But the Iranians, I think, are sophisticated and are using it and using the election as a bargaining chip. If Trump wants to win this war and bring world peace and prosperity,

Starting point is 02:25:47 he needs to do two things, okay? If he does these two things, I guarantee you, this war will end. The United States will come up on top. And these two things are, one, give $2,000 to Iran. $2,000 in Iran. $2 trillion to Iran.

Starting point is 02:26:02 The United States is $4,200 in debt. Give $2,000 to Iran, not a big deal. The second thing is control Israel, embargo Israel, saying, like, if you misbehave, we will cut off arms to you guys and will no longer support you, right? So withdraw from Lebanon, stop these seven wars you're fighting right now, come to peace with the Palestinians.

Starting point is 02:26:25 So if he does these two things, he will be remembered as the greatest president in U.S. history? No, no, no, no, no. First of all, first of all, I think, so, so I think that the problem with the plan, first of all, I think that containing Israel is becoming more and more part of President Trump's repertoire. He's not doing as much as I think he should be, but it's become, the bigger part is your first point. The key problem President Trump faces is he's trying to end this conflict between now in the midterms or now in say January, but really now in the midterms.

Starting point is 02:27:04 And if he were to give two trillion dollars, what would happen is Iran would say, sure, we also want you to pull all your forces out. Fine. Trump pulls all the forces out and it's only happening. Now hold it. Hold it. And two trillion dollars. And what then is Iran going to do? It's going to likely topple the governments in the Gulf states. It's not going to sit back and say, oh, sure, because they've got free reign because there's no oversight. Because there's a power vacuum. What has created, what's been created now, and this would make it even worse, is a power vacuum where it used to be America preeminent, Israel on the rise, Iran declined. Well, now the power vacuum is because this is changing. And what's going to fill that power vacuum is critical for the

Starting point is 02:27:51 future. Iran, if under your plan, they will fill the vacuum for Iran and this will wreck Trump future. It's not just Trump won't viscerally do it. This is just going to wreck Trump's future. I did not say give Iran $2,000 $2,000 of gold. I said give them $2,000, $2,000, $2,000, $2,000, which means that. Oh, it's going to be worthless anyway. Well, yeah, that's a point. If you want the $2,000, you want to give him a sucker deal. If you want the $2,000,000, okay? You need to participate in the global economy. You need to make sure the Middle East is able to send oil to East Asia. Well, no, this is a version of Adi Vance's idea of pay for performance. And as I argued before when the MOU was coming up, I advanced his whole

Starting point is 02:28:37 approach to this as a business deal, I think was completely misguided. What Iran is doing is not a business deal, pay for performance like playing a football player. What they want is power. Power is what's that issue. So that's why I'm describing is there's a power vacuum, who's going to fill the vacuum. It's not about the money per se. It's about power because in international politics, that's what determines outcomes. 20 years ago, there was a philosophy in Washington called neoliberalism. I'm not sure if it's still around, but the idea was- Oh, it's fading fast. Well, the idea was that trade would promote peace, right? So if you wanted peace in Middle East, you just trade it with Iran. Iran has a lot of oil. You let them sell the oil. You let them sell the oil.

Starting point is 02:29:20 and then you have peace. Yeah. Is it anything wrong with that idea? There's nothing inherently wrong with it as long as you had a big protector like the United States that could enforce the stability on which that deal rested. And this is your point about how globalization is coming unglued. So I agree. I wrote a piece in foreign affairs laying out that what's happening with the Iran War is America

Starting point is 02:29:47 as protector of the global world. rules of power, meaning stability for commerce, is simply coming unglued. So it's not just here in the Middle East, it's going to be around the world. And in 91, when America won this stunning victory in the Middle East, it wasn't just confidence that America could police the sea lanes in the Middle East. There was confidence America could police the sea lanes globally. That's why trade went from 38% of world product to 62% of world product. Think about that. Because it became cheaper to trade. You didn't have to worry about instability as much. Now, instability is back. What does that mean? Trade is more expensive, more risky insurance rates. And what does that mean?

Starting point is 02:30:34 Anything that becomes more expensive, you get less of it. Do you think Trump's really serious about pulling out of NATO? Oh, I don't think it even, I think NATO's are really. I think NATO's are dead in terms of the key element of NATO Christmas. But is it not symbolic to do that? It's not about that. NATO at its core is not just a political alliance. What's in Article 5 is that once Article 5 is declared a US general, there's no other decision, it's a US general, SACYore,

Starting point is 02:31:04 who commands all the NATO troops, not just US troops, all the NATO troops, the British troops, the German troops, France, not in NATO for this reason. And that is what NATO is. NATO is a unified, it's a war fighting, unified alliance where you decide in advance, the Americans call the shots for everybody. Who's going to be in Europe is going to, after what they've been through, who's going to let America run British troops?

Starting point is 02:31:35 But you also remember that the Americans don't want to be exposed there. Always when you're looking at Trump, okay? And he was serious about these forever wars. That he clumsily, stupidly, got involved in one, is true. But he hid out of a fundamental principle of the United States. We did not want to be involved in these wars, these endless wars that we lost. It never helped. There's actually a much simpler reason.

Starting point is 02:32:03 Trump really hates the Europeans. He hates the Europeans much more than hates the Iranians. He blames, I'm serious, he blames the Europeans for his 2020-20-20 election loss. He thinks that Obama conspired the Europeans to defeat him. That's why he went out of NATO. I'd be doing a patriotic disservice if I didn't bring it up. Is the UK ever seriously going to be considered in discussions of world powers moving forward again? Well, if you, so I look at percentages of a country's world product compared to world product.

Starting point is 02:32:33 If you look at the UK in 1990, that was around 6 to 6.5% of world GDP. What is it today? Just under 4%. So what's happened since 1990? So again, I track power with some key metrics that we can observe. And in 1990, America was 26% of world's GDP. China was 2%. Wow.

Starting point is 02:32:56 And the Europeans varied from about 5% to 7% Germany the highest. You look today and America's flat at 26. China's up from 2 to 17. And what's happened to all those Europeans, they're down by a third or more. Who's the sucker here? So people say we've been uncle, this is one of my complaints against this argument that America's uncle sucker.

Starting point is 02:33:21 No, we played the Europeans here, not the other way around. And Japan, so this is why I don't worry about, Japan was over 10% of world's GDP at that point. Where are they today? 4%. 4%. So if you just, this is all World Bank numbers.

Starting point is 02:33:40 People listening can go and Google it. will see that we have been enormously privileged by this period called the Cold War, which this war is ending, at the expense of other countries. One of the things you should point out, however, is Japan responded by massively increasing its military power. So it did not simply look at us at the United States to say, where are you going? It took action, and China now worries of me. a great deal about Japan. The Europeans thought it was

Starting point is 02:34:16 in a moral act improper to want to pull back and depend on it. The American point of view was the EU is larger than China economically. There is no possible reason why we

Starting point is 02:34:32 should be the primary defender of Europe. That was a fundamental reason for many years, but why now? So I don't think this should be put in a Trump load. I think with or without Trump, this questioning of whether or not we should remain exposed in NATO and what NATO should evolve into would have been put on the table by any president at this point.

Starting point is 02:34:59 The China example is very much what Europe should have done. We pulled back from that. The Japanese created a much, is creating a much greater form. along with the Australians, and along with the Vietnamese, we're now involved in that, too. So many things are happening. So I think there are limits to what we can blame Trump for. We mentioned this earlier on. I wasn't really blaming Trump.

Starting point is 02:35:26 I was just to be clear. I was just showing the whole in the argument. I understand that. I'm simply saying that there's a very reasonable redefinition of Europe after Ukraine defeated essentially Russia. We mentioned this earlier on changing demographics specifically in China, but this is happening globally. Looks like global population is going to peak 2100, something like that. And weight decline is happening, not just in the United States, but in Europe as well.

Starting point is 02:35:55 Kiss the bottom of 10 billion maybe, and then it's going to do this, unless there's some intervention that we can't yet foresee. When it comes to you guys planning out how you think about the future geopolitically, how much of a, are curveball is the potential changing demographics. Obviously, we've got AI and robotics and automation coming in at the same time, but what it seems like China's doing is basically trying to speed run using humans to build robots so that the robots can replace the humans once the humans have fucked off. How do you think about global population decline playing into your models moving forward?

Starting point is 02:36:33 So this war in the middle ease, people don't really appreciate the geopolitical consequences. So right now we're about 8 billion people, but if you talk to economists, they'll tell you that the Earth by itself can only support about 2 billion people. The way we get around this is with fertilizer, right? So Middle East is important not just because it provides cheap energy, but it also provides a lot of fertilizer to the world. I can't remember the exact number, maybe a quarter to a third of the world's fertilizer. So if a quarter to a third of the world's fertilizer goes offline for a year, then you're going to have millions of people, starve to death. So there's no way we will reach non-bill people. You will see massive starvation

Starting point is 02:37:17 throughout Africa at some point. Hang on you think this is going to happen. You don't think... Oh, I think it's baked in already. So I agree maybe for a slightly different angle on this, which is, so I think about power, balance of power. You're hearing me come everything from a balance of power perspective. That's why I sometimes agree, disagree with the other. But from the balance of power, what's happening? was preeminent from 1991 until this war. America's being knocked back because for the first time since 91, a state beat America. Just think about that.

Starting point is 02:37:54 And everybody's learning that lesson, that America can be beaten. Well, that means America's global influence that we call it the world empire. You can call it American hegemony. This is now fading fast. What's going to replace it, we could say it's multipolarity, I think it's going to be more fragmented than that.

Starting point is 02:38:14 I think you're going to see, you might even call it an emerging anarchy that's going to occur. And under those conditions here, this is because the states that used to be under America's protection, they're not under America's protection before. You're talking, we're talking about Japan building force. And notice we're not saying Japan getting America to come and help it. We're talking about Japan on its own. Many states around. around the world are thinking this way. That's what I mean by an emerging anarchy. It's not really quite a multipolar world.

Starting point is 02:38:47 It's more fragmented than that. Who would be the polls? It'll be a center. U.S. and China have a lining interests fundamentally. And we are seeing that diplomatic process playing out. I think it will succeed with an understanding. But at the same time, China is not the Soviet Union. it doesn't occupy countries.

Starting point is 02:39:11 It uses economic influence in those countries, investment, and so on and so forth. So it's a very different country, not too different from the United States in the way it operates as well, although the United States actually operates with more military power. But in this emerging anarchy, you will see greater incentives for nuclear proliferation, for example. With greater incentives, and you already saw that with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Arabia, you will see these incentives start to spread as a result of this war. What will also happen as a result of the incentives for proliferation is concerns about preventive wars, preemptive wars, to stop that. So we've worried about for some time, Poland might start to think about going nuclear.

Starting point is 02:40:00 People are already noticing Putin has been focusing on Poland. Why would Putin focus on Poland? I'm going to Poland next week to meet the president. There you go. Ask him if he's got any nukes. The answer is Poland is the eastern front of Europe. It cannot trust the Western Front because it's the alliance of the willing. Okay. And with that statement, that shows it.

Starting point is 02:40:28 Poland is evolving dramatically and it has the capability and is discussing becoming a nuclear power. There you go. So the question of, because what I talked to this, Then, I constantly hear it back, you know, we're not counting on the United States. We have 10,000 troops there, but we're not counting on the United States. So it's evolving dramatically, and it's going to be looking at that. So I agree with you that the need to have nuclear weapons, okay, or the supposed needs to have nuclear weapons will create it.

Starting point is 02:41:01 But at the same time, I see the economic alliance between the United States and China. and I think that's going to happen is going to create a strange pole between the two because they have very similar interests I don't disagree with you I don't disagree with Zhang what I'm saying is we're moving to a more war-prone

Starting point is 02:41:24 world yep well the world is a fairly full of war for a while but this is about to get much worse what are the places that you're keeping an eye on with regards to conflicts that aren't just going to expand from existing ones North Korea. North Korea is the big one. If I'm North Korea and I'm, you know, I'm poor, but I've got nuclear weapons and Japan, China, South Korea are all distracted, why don't I just extort everyone?

Starting point is 02:41:53 Right? Why don't I just like, you know, hold a gun to everyone's head and like just pay up or I'll just blow you all up? China itself has tensions with North Korea. That's right. Okay. Why is it, why is it the case of this, whatever we want to call it, global quasi-anical? world. Why? Why is that happening? Because we have lived under a certain amount of stability from 1991 when the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union, that Cold War conflict receded. It was immediately followed by the first Gulf War, which showed America could easily beat Iraq, which was a power trying to control the world's economy through oil. Now people know that daddy can't look after everybody. Daddy can't take care of you anymore.

Starting point is 02:42:38 Daddy's either too old, baby boomer. So maybe, you know, too old. Daddy's too old. He's not got the souls anymore. And he doesn't have always marbles. And I also assert the other thing, the United States doesn't want that role. So it's not only they can't do it.

Starting point is 02:42:53 It doesn't want to do it. So it's strange to think that you can have a globe with a bunch of different nation states, individual countries who are competing with each other and sometimes intention with each other, but you still kind of need somebody in charge. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:43:07 And now there's nobody in charge. So, yeah. You know what? If you go back to 2000, the world was perfect. But then, I'm serious. The world was perfect in 2000. It was pretty perfect. And then the United States decided to go invade Iraq, Libya, Syria, and create all this chaos

Starting point is 02:43:26 in the Middle East. And then it started to sanction Russia. NATO started to expand westwards. And then you have this conflict. in Ukraine between Russia. So I mean, I think it's hubris. So it's not just the United States becoming exhausted and doesn't want its power.

Starting point is 02:43:47 I think it's also hubris. So this makes the Iran war even more stupid. Oh yeah. It sort of expedited something that was already quite predictable. I modeled other wars and conflict for years. This was the one I modeled for 20 years, year after year, in and out.

Starting point is 02:44:05 Why? And it was because this was the next German. This was the biggest problem if we took it on that we would find for United States since Germany. How do that? That's what I'm asking, right? We're trying to tell you the reasons, but we will be debating this, Chris, for decades. If it's, I will agree with you that if it extends, it will be on that. It has not extended.

Starting point is 02:44:32 Let's not overestimated yet. Okay, but I understand on that, but if you say this is a insane move, which if you give it enough time, and it's not that much time, presumably 18 months or two and a half years or something like, it's a really big deal. Like, if you, you're, we don't need to worry about it. It wasn't that big of an error if we don't reach the end of the gangplank. It's like, no, no, no, like you're already on the plank. You're walking. There's water either side of you. If you just about managed to turn around in the end and then reverse your direction.

Starting point is 02:45:02 And the difference between life and death. is how far you go down the plank. Oh, I agree. I'm less confident about the I'm less confident about the decision. Because you get a little wind that pushes you off. Yeah. But it really is like, oh,

Starting point is 02:45:17 this was the worst thing you could do. This was absolutely, yes. And I think this was where the real issue with President Trump walling himself off from anything like strong advisor. So if you just look at the

Starting point is 02:45:33 advisors around Trump. I'm sorry, this is just an extremely weak group of advisors. And not me harp as well. I will also say for the American point of view, I don't want to get into the, some of the, Vietnam was far worse than this war from the American point of view. A global point of view, it was not that terrible. Exactly. But for the Americans, this was the moment. That's why after Vietnam, we could just shift over to deal with Europe, try to defend Europe from the Soviet Union. This war, we're not shifting. Dude, if this turns out, if history looks back and does its analysis and finds out that one guy, one morning, just decided to press the button? Yes.

Starting point is 02:46:13 Like that, oh, what was the motivation? Was it some deeply sought after analyst-fueled thing? It's like, no, some guy just woke up and decided to press a button. You will think, how was it that we allowed power to be centralized so much behind the one? There was a famous commercial by Hillary Clinton in 2016, which is, The red phone is ringing. It's 3 a.m. And that means that was the phone to the nuclear weapons.

Starting point is 02:46:39 Who do you want to answer that phone? This is the way we've built our Constitution, Chris. One person makes that decision. But I would argue that don't overestimate, okay, if you extrapolate all the way forward, okay, but see the forces that are making Iran itself, consider what to do, and so on. So, yes, if this war continued, it would have massive effects. It has already had significant effects. On the other hand, do not assume that we understand at this point just how far Iran can go as well.

Starting point is 02:47:20 Yes, one man started this war, okay, he's failed to win it. But do not assume that this war cannot end except go on forever. I very much hope that it does. Well, when I say January, we'll know the answer to that. Is January kind of a point of no return for you? It's a point. It's an inflection point because in January, either President Trump will have the wherewithal to be able to continue the war or he won't.

Starting point is 02:47:50 And that's because of the Democrats in Congress. So the Democrats will either win Congress or not. And if they win Congress, they'll either act to shut down the war or not. We will know this in January. The damage has already been done. Like a lot of the facilities, the energy facilities of the city have been shut down. It's going to take them the six months. Let's assume the war ends today or tomorrow.

Starting point is 02:48:12 It takes them six months to restart all these facilities. Yes. Well, then six months it'll get better then. So we're talking about a fundamental shift in the nature of life on Earth, which could happen, but not in this short of run. Well, wait a man, but his, I don't think the two of you are as far apart, because remember, you're speaking in very, very broad strokes. What he is saying is that even by January, my threshold, he's very concerned about the debt crisis. He's very concerned about the world.

Starting point is 02:48:46 He's worried about the world economy. So, and your point is, even if we have a world recession or depression, we'll recover. You two are not as far apart as you might think. But the point is, I think that we are at a bookend with this war. The one thing that won't come back is confidence in America as the protector of that global system. That's not coming back for decades. What I'm saying to end is this is exactly what we in Texas want because we had,

Starting point is 02:49:20 because we served during the Cold War at the Foldigap. and there's really a desire in the United States in the public not to have this role among those of us working this this is a natural thing that we should have this role but when I talk to my neighbors the idea that we are responsible

Starting point is 02:49:45 for the world and one of the reasons there's hostility from the Texas Republicans toward Trump very much so is that he did what he promised he wouldn't do, get us involved again. Yes, and I'm not arguing for taking care of the world to take care of the world.

Starting point is 02:50:03 I'm saying that America's primacy is not coming back. Is there a... And again, I will say, that's not a tragedy for America. Well, the economy losing the... If this is right, then the future of Social Security is not long for this world.

Starting point is 02:50:23 and that's a tremendous problem. I have a 97-year-old mother-in-law, and I am seeing already that we are horrendous in this country at I've been taking care of people in their 90s, and we're going to have more people living in their 90s. What if Social Security goes away as a result of this war? I don't know how to connection have been made. That would be possible.

Starting point is 02:50:49 Well, this is more his area than mom. Well, I would argue that the Americans, production and trade and everything else is critical to the world. It's these financial underpinnings that are being stressed significantly. When you look at world trade, you look at who consumes it and who can't consume it, the United States still has a role. Okay. Artificial intelligence now accounts for 50% of GDP growth in the United States, 50% of GDP growth,

Starting point is 02:51:20 or these AI data centers. Guess who's finance? these data centers, the GCC. So imagine a scenario where this war continues, the GCC is no longer able to provide any financing. The bubble, the AI bubble burst. You have like millions of unemployed Americans. I mean, the consequences will be very dire.

Starting point is 02:51:46 There's different models that may play out. That may be one of them. But I see it happening somewhat differently, which is that the United States, United States, dominating the Western Hemisphere, not having the price to pay in terms of defense and everything else, may well get by. So the issue here is not that the world isn't changing. I think we all agree that a radical new system is emerging.

Starting point is 02:52:16 We may not agree on what it would look like, but certainly going to be different. the same time, I don't view this evolution as catastrophic from the American point of view or from the global point of view. Is there a conflict or a war or a area of focus that everyone's preparing for right now that probably won't happen? Is there something that a lot of attention is being paid to a type of... Nuclear war. Nuclear war will not happen. Why? Because there's no incentive for these nations who blow themselves up. Mad. Yeah, it's madness, right?

Starting point is 02:52:56 Mutual assured destruction. Yeah, yeah. Which is why we haven't had any such wars. Right. So I don't see any scenario where nuclear weapons are used, even pathically. I think that before the war started on February 28th, I put the odds of a nuclear weapon being used by the United States in this conflict, because I modeled for 20 years, as under 5%, by Israel.

Starting point is 02:53:20 at about 15%. So just to tell you where this has been. I've now essentially been doubling those over time because the nature of the players. So the modeling is agnostic to the decision makers right over time because you have different presidents come in. But what we've already seen is that President Trump is already inordinately looking into nuclear weapons.

Starting point is 02:53:48 A dolphin, which is a nuclear, arms carrying submarine by Israel, Israel moved it into the Red Sea within firing range of Tehran. Now, these are not by themselves dispositive. These are just movements. So I understand that. But nonetheless, these are encouraging Iran to move forward to do nuclear tests. So as you look at, I'm not saying, so as you just look at strategic interaction, so that's what a model is. It's not just one player at strategic interaction. The reason I've up my percentages is because I've seen actions by Israel and the United States that I believe are increasing Iran's incentives to do nuclear tests.

Starting point is 02:54:35 And that once Iran would actually literally prepare to do nuclear tests, if we see those coming, that is another interaction. So that's my dynamic that I'm concerned about. But it's not at the level of 50, 70%. Right now, Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon because of the fatwa in place. So for the fat war to be rescinded, the Supreme Leader would need to organize a council, and they would need to... There's no chance that they could subvert the religious doctrine. It's a the feocacy.

Starting point is 02:55:04 It's like saying, like, you know, let's ignore the First Amendment of the Constitution. Yeah, but that could be arranged pretty quickly. Well... And they're about to withdraw from the NPT, possibly. So they're already talking about... Right. So these are these... They first need to revoke that fatwa, according to their system.

Starting point is 02:55:22 So Iran would only develop a nuclear weapon if Israel, United States, were to attack first. Right. But if you're Iran, sorry, if you're Israel in the United States, you use a tactical nuclear women, say maybe on Pekhous Mountain, right? What do you achieve? Building deliverable nuclear weapon is much more complex than testing one. You have to have all sorts of elements come together. It would take time.

Starting point is 02:55:48 Well, that's true for hydrogen Generation 2 weapons, but not atomic weapons, Fat Man and Little Boy. So Fat Man and Little Boy are undergraduate, well, no, Fat Man and Little Boy are delivered on aircraft. This was not a put into a, the second generation was miniaturized to put into the missile. But once we look. I simply am saying that developing a nuclear weapon

Starting point is 02:56:13 and testing it and making certain works, takes a bit of time. Well, if North Korea, the 212th poorest country on the planet can do 60, pretty sure this country can conquer this problem. Over a period of time, yes. Well, just pointing out,

Starting point is 02:56:29 you're raising it to the bar, it must be miniaturized and look like our, once we go back to World War II level nuclear weapons, which just have to keep in mind, killed well over 100,000 people in those two explosions. North Korean nuclear.

Starting point is 02:56:45 of problems. Nuclear program in North Korea had lasted many years. Well, that's because they went to miniaturized. I'm just pointing out that Iran may go much more quickly to atomic weapons. The thing I want to do is

Starting point is 02:56:56 I see the risk of nuclear war even with Iraq down the road with plenty of time to do it. We're talking about things we're afraid of. If Iran tests two nuclear devices, I think that the odds that we're going to look at those two nuclear tests,

Starting point is 02:57:13 let's say it's an October surprise. totally. If they test two nuclear weapons in October, are you telling me, George, we're going to look at those two nuclear tests and say, don't worry, folks, it's going to be years before they could hit New York. If they test two nuclear weapons in October.

Starting point is 02:57:28 Two nuclear devices. You're absolutely right. I am saying, however, knowing something about developing nuclear weapons, that first test will probably fail and so on and so forth. There is time is all I'm saying. Okay? Nothing more than that.

Starting point is 02:57:45 What should people be paying the most attention to, let's say the next two years, something like that, people that are listening? What are the warning signs, nuclear tests coming out of Iran, one of those? What are the little hurdles in terms of timing? You mentioned November. You also mentioned January. What are the bad signs or some of the good signs? Just what should people be paying attention to? If this is the sort of change which occurs, what would be the big inflection points that you guys are paying attention to?

Starting point is 02:58:15 Well, the number one inflection point I'm tracking, and again, building on what I just told you about January, is whether we will see the Democrats win, one or both houses of Congress, and seated peacefully. Seated peacefully. So we need to understand that what we saw in November 2020 was an election did not go President Trump's way. Now, we have not seen President Trump as president have that happen again. He is about to be president, and we're going to see in November 2006, will an election not go President Trump's way? And if it doesn't go President Trump's way, is he going to do anything to disturb the process of it going? And that will go on for months because the election is November 3rd, seating the Congress is January 3rd. If that's what I'm really focused on, because if that goes south, all of these issues are going to get much, much, much, much way.

Starting point is 02:59:12 I see the positive one evolving as a U.S.-China economic entente and reducing tensions within that. If those two countries get together, the global system changes, possibly with proper presidents, stabilizes in a different form. So I'm looking at that as the most critical thing coming. My question is, will the United States target critical civil infrastructure in the United States? Iran next one or two months. If Iran starts, sorry, the United States starts targeting power plants or these desalachian plants am mass, this war is out of control. We are now beyond the escalation trap. It's complete madness. Even if it's done remotely, it doesn't need to be boots on the ground. It doesn't need to be nukes. If the United States targets Iranian power plants, Iran will target

Starting point is 03:00:07 in any way. In any way, Iran will target all of the Middle East energy infrastructure. The pipelines, the energy fields, and it's easy to do with drones. I agree with this. I just put the internal problem a little bit higher, but I agree with his assessment that, and this is part of my nightmare scenario. And it's not like these two things are existing separately. They actually go together. That's what I'm trying to say.

Starting point is 03:00:28 These things actually go together. And then I gave this presentation to my substack about the four steps that would be the nightmare scenario just in the Iran War. And this is, this is the critical step. because once you hit, and when I taught for the U.S. Air Force in the 1990s, targeting electric power plants was one of the critical things we studied for months and months. We fortunately did it in the unclassified world so that I'm able to talk about this. We brought in people that ran the power plants, the engineers that built them, so I have a fair idea of the different places you would target the plants, what the consequences are. And there's a great paper that if people are listening by Thomas Griffith called Targeting Electric Power.

Starting point is 03:01:14 He was a military officer when he wrote this paper. It is the best paper on the consequences of targeting military power. And on my substack, I wrote a lengthy piece what targeting Tehran would really mean for the people of Tehran. When you take out the electric power in Tehran for a month. and I walk through it. Not good, I imagine. Starvation. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 03:01:40 Starvation. You would, it's, oh, yeah, it's much, because all of the, so much of the food, 25% of the food in Tehran is under refrigeration, and that includes all the supermarkets, all, there's so much that is. And then you really start to run out of the ability to pump water. So things like water pumping stations in the Middle East, where you depend on, water so there's there's so much of detail underneath this summary of droughts starvation mass evacuations of the city but where do these 10 million people go it's not like they

Starting point is 03:02:19 just run to some other place and turn on the faucet so this is the the targeting of electric power is much worse than most people oh my gosh it's actually worse than a nuclear option to do that would be worse than using a tactical nuke on pick In terms of destruction, quality of life change. In terms of the escalation ladder. Oh, right. Oh, the escalation ladder, civilian death. So if you hit, you're saying if you hit power plants with any kind of missile, that's more expedious.

Starting point is 03:02:51 Well, just to be super clear, there's two aim points on the electric power. And this is a target set that we've, the American Air Force has hit many times. You designed it. Yeah. Well, in order to understand. why not to do it. And by the way, from the moment of Tom Griffith's paper, and we did this in the mid-90s until right now, we've not targeted electric power.

Starting point is 03:03:15 So that paper for 20 years has been the paper. It was a warning. Of the warning to all the generals in CENTCOM. This is what it means to target electric power. And it shows, and so what you are seeing in the plan itself. So if we could imagine, I don't see a good thing to use as a plan. But you can hit the cables that connect the plant to the grid, the electric power grid.

Starting point is 03:03:43 That's like blowing a fuse in your home. That knocks it out for like a four. Yeah, about a week. Okay, maybe two at most, but maybe, it's really about four or five days. But if you hit the holes, the actual generating holes, those are each special made. They're gigantic. They're much bigger than this whole building. And it takes six months to even design them and preempt.

Starting point is 03:04:05 produce them, much less bring them back in. So once you go after the halls, so when President Trump, his rhetoric here is worrisome because he's talking about, when he's talking about these massive consequences, this would be fit, this would fit with the description of going after the holes. And you're not bringing this back with the Red Cross and you're not going to come in and you're not going to support this with a giant Berlin airlift of massive water. to all these people. This is, this is gonna, this would be much more horrendous.

Starting point is 03:04:41 And if you take out Tehran, that's 10 million people. It wouldn't be long before you took out another like 10 different nodes. And the entire 70% of the population would be without electric power. It's a, it's a much bigger problem than people realize. That is scary. That is terrifying. Gentlemen, I appreciate you all. This is, I don't know whether I'm reassured.

Starting point is 03:05:05 but I'm definitely more educated, which is nice. Where should people go to check out everything that you've got going on? I'm on YouTube and Substack, Predictive History. I'm on Substack here, Ouscalation Trap, Professor Pape, and starting tomorrow, a brand new YouTube channel that's coming tomorrow afternoon, Pape on the Politics of Force, so stay tuned. And a new book.

Starting point is 03:05:26 And a new book coming, Our Own Worst Enemies, America in the Age of Violent Populism. And my nightmare scenario was always that we'd have an election as discontentious with an international crisis, and they're both happening. Thank you. And for me, geopoliticalfutures.com is what you could visit. And I'm of the pain. Humanity will survive again as extremely improbable as might seem. Beautiful.

Starting point is 03:05:58 Gentlemen, I appreciate you all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Goodbye, my beauties. That was great. Thanks so much. George. Thank you very much.

Starting point is 03:06:04 That was awesome. That was awesome. Enjoyed that. Thanks, Chris. Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back to school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's sliced delimmy products for always 375. And get Life Brand Pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each. At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready, with a whole world and more.

Modern Wisdom - WW3 Debate: “We’re On the Brink of Global Collapse” - #1144

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