Jacobsen & Bustamante: Why the Iran strike resets the rules

Benjamin Radd 0:00 What does the United States think it's going to gain from decapitating the Iranian leadership?

Annie Jacobsen 0:04 Well, that, that's kind of obvious based on what the president has said. It's that he, he-

Benjamin Radd 0:07 On what the president has said?

Annie Jacobsen 0:08 I'm, I'm, I'm just saying based on what the president says.

Benjamin Radd 0:10 You can't trust anything that you're hearing right now. You can't trust anything that you're reading right now.

Steven Bartlett 0:14 Okay. Too tumultuous.

Annie Jacobsen 0:15 Well, that's, that-

Steven Bartlett 0:15 Who do you trust? You have to trust somebody, right?

Annie Jacobsen 0:17 I mean, that's paranoid. It's not-

Steven Bartlett 0:17 Paranoia is healthy

Annie Jacobsen 0:18 ... that is absolutely, it is absolutely paranoid-

Steven Bartlett 0:20 It's healthy skepticism

Annie Jacobsen 0:20 ... to suggest that everything is misinformation. Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, so it's not a nuclear threat.

Benjamin Radd 0:27 You speak a different nuclear language than I do. This regime is at its lowest, lowest point. Why not strike it now? I mean, I can give lots of reasons why you wouldn't strike it-

Annie Jacobsen 0:34 But what I would also say-

Benjamin Radd 0:36 It had the ability to create their own sort of-

Steven Bartlett 0:37 What are you concerned about? And what are the unintended consequences that you're foreseeing?

Benjamin Radd 0:40 There is a domino effect that happens with every decision the United States makes. So-

Steven Bartlett 0:48 Guys, I've got a quick favor to ask you. We're approaching a significant subscriber milestone on this show, and roughly sixty-nine percent of you that listen and love this show haven't yet subscribed for whatever reason. If there was ever a time for you to do us a favor, if we've ever done anything for you, given you value in any way, it is simply hitting that subscribe button. And it means so much to myself but also to my team because when we hit these milestones, we go away as a team and celebrate. And it's the thing, the simple free easy thing you can do to help make this show a little bit better every single week. So that's a favor I would ask you. And, um, if you do hit the subscribe button, I won't let you down, and we'll continue to find small ways to make this whole production better. Thank you so much for being part of this journey. It means the world, and, uh, yeah, let's do this. [upbeat music] Benjamin, Annie, Andrew, first and foremost, thank you for being here today. I, I have to start

Steven Bartlett 1:40 with the question that's been on my mind as somebody that doesn't know a huge amount about geopolitics, which is, what the hell is going on? And I s- and I say that because that's exactly what I mean. What is going on? And what context do I need to understand this sort of historical context of the actions we're seeing in Iran with this war right now? Benjamin, I know you've got a, a personal connection to Iran because your family fled Iran, I believe.

Benjamin Radd 2:04 Y- yeah. I was, uh, I was two years old when we left in March of nineteen seventy-nine, um, uh, a few months after the Shah had left and, uh, just after Khomeini had arrived.

Steven Bartlett 2:13 What is the Shah and what is Khomeini?

Benjamin Radd 2:16 Yeah, so the Shah, uh, the former monarch of Iran, um, the Pahlavi dynasty, which came into power in the nineteen thirties, deposing a previous dynasty that had been around for a couple hundred years. And, um, the-- h-his father brought in that dynasty, and then it was eventually-- he was deposed by the British and the Americans who felt he was getting too close to the Nazis during World War II, concerned about supply routes for the Nazis' oil. And his son was installed on the throne at a very young age, I believe eighteen or nineteen. And, um, he ruled Iran from, uh, from that period, nineteen forty-one, nineteen forty-two, around that time, all the way through seventy-nine. A great ally of the United States over, over time eventually, um, and, uh, was depod- was, was, um, overthrown in a revolution and, uh, by Khomeini, who was a senior cleric who had been a thorn in the Shah's side since the sixties, was exiled first to Turkey, then Iraq, then ultimately to France, right outside Paris, actually. From there, he basically led the revolution that led to the Shah's, uh, removal, um, ouster in seventy-nine.

Steven Bartlett 3:19 And how was Iran different when the Shah was in power versus when Khomeini was in power?

Benjamin Radd 3:23 That depends on who you ask. Um, it was a constitutional monarchy. The Shah had powers that exceeded beyond what we think a constitutional monarchy has today, like in Great Britain. Um, he was an-- he ruled with an iron fist when he needed to. He was an authoritarian, but he also was one that was rapidly modernizing Iranian society, wanting to make it more like the West, using Iran's immense oil resources and wealth to really accelerate development, building of social institutions, healthcare, uh, literacy, modernization, all of those things. That was his focus, make Iran more like the West. And, uh, in that sense, he succeeded, but it came at the expense oftentimes of civil liberties for many people. It came at the expense of freedom for those who wanted to essentially practice religion, Islam, Shia Islam, in their own way. The Shah was not hostile to religion, but he, he, his policies were inconsistent with where the traditional religious Iranians wanted to go. And it sort of created a schism in society. And you also had, um, a, a wealth gap, an income disparity. Immense wealth poured into the country, but it didn't trickle its way downward into the sort of the village and rural poor. And so there was a lot of frustration, a lot of disenchantment with his policies, and that led to sort of this populist backlash of wanting something that was more democratic, more accountable, uh, more like the West, um, ironically. And, uh, and that sort of was the beginning of, of where that cycle led.

Steven Bartlett 4:47 And so how did Khomeini take power of Iran?

Benjamin Radd 4:51 He led a movement, a mass populist movement, not a religious one, but meant to, um, go across multiple socioeconomic and political divides and unified the opposition under this idea of removing the monarchy, removing dependence on the West. He specifically said Iran-- uh, the United States was to large part to blame for Iran being in the state that it was, for people not having the, the, the, the things they needed to live, the freedoms, the liberties. He blamed the Shah's, um, use of the secret police and torture methods on the United States and on Israel, who he claimed, you know, taught the secret police how to do these things. Um, there's a complicated sort of history to that. And he basically promised them salvation from a, what he d- what he portrayed as a puppet tyrant of the United States. And the masses bought into this, b-both the left and the right. The really, the right consisted of the, the black, the Islamists. So you had the red, which were sort of the, the Marxist socialist, uh, followers. You had the black, and then you had sort of that middle in, in between, and they all coalesced around this one charismatic religious figure, a very, um, austere man, um, one who di-didn't really have a lot of luxuries himself, led a simple life, but was consistent with his opposition to what he saw, uh, tyranny and despotism. And people bought into it.

Steven Bartlett 6:12 And the Americans didn't like this.

Benjamin Radd 6:14 The Americans didn't know what to make of it, and there was a failure, and I think Andrew can talk about this as well, over a failure by the State Department and the CIA in the '70s to see where the threat was. They saw the threat coming from the Soviet Union. They, they were still afraid of Soviet encroachment in the Middle East, particularly through Iran. Their concerns were with the Marxists, the communist parties. They did not carefully look at the black. They didn't look at the Islamists. They didn't see them as a threat until it was too late. The Shah himself blocked or really didn't give the CIA full access to Iran. There was limited information that was coming out. He relied on his own, uh, intelligence, which fed him information he wanted to hear, which is that everything is going great. The country's doing well. The people love you. They're all happy. Until the discontent and the, the protests became-- they reached a threshold, and it was too late to do anything about it.

Speaker 7:03 Yeah, the United States was kind of at their peak period of meddling in foreign governments at the time. Um, kind of, uh, in a strange way that we've come full circle, this idea of, of controlling an entire country by controlling the figurehead of the country. That's where we were in the, uh, late '70s at the kind of brink of the Cold War, right? Nobody knew that the Berlin Wall was going to fall. Uh, we were all concerned with the spread of communism. Nobody was paying attention to the Islamist threat. Nobody was paying attention to really any other kind of threat at all. It was very much the, the unfettered, uncontrolled, unsupervised CIA running around with no oversight and with very deep pockets.

Steven Bartlett 7:43 And that changed at some point.

Speaker 7:44 That changed in two thousand one when, uh, Al-Qaeda successfully carried out the 9/11 attacks in New York, and all of a sudden, the threat that we had all been ignoring was on our doorstep and had grown so wealthy and had spread so vast across the world that Islamic extremism became almost overnight a household term. Now, there's still a difference between Al-Qaeda Islamic Shia extremism and what is practiced in the Shia faith and with the outcomes that the Shia militants are trying to pursue, uh, in support of Iran. But it's hard to differentiate that in the United States where we don't understand the difference between Sunni and Shia.

Steven Bartlett 8:24 Annie, what do you think this war is really about?

Annie Jacobsen 8:28 Uh, very interesting what you both said, and I think what I would add to that to-- that which very much speaks to today is that the CIA, in fact, had many ups and downs over the decades from its creation right after World War II until this moment in time and then on 9/11. And so it's been like an accordion experience of power being taken away from the CIA and then being grabbed back because the CIA has always historically been the president's hidden hand. It has been the way in which the White House can execute executive power without having to follow the laws of war that the military does. So military is a code called Title Ten. CIA is a code called Title Fifty. And while that may sound a bit wonkish, it is important to understand because Title Fifty essentially, as Andrew can speak to, gives the president authority under classified presidential directive to change any rule he wants that suits him for an operation at hand, which gets us precisely to where we are today.

Steven Bartlett 9:38 So as far as I understand, there was the Shah, the sort of royal leader who was in power. He was overthrown in the late nineteen seventies by Khomeini. Khomeini galvanized people to believe in his way, and he's been in power ever since.

Speaker 9:50 It gets complicated because Khomeini with an O was the original leader of the revolution and was later replaced by Khamenei-

Steven Bartlett 9:58 Wow

Speaker 9:58 ...with an A.

Steven Bartlett 9:58 Okay. There's two.

Speaker 9:59 And but no, that's, that, that is a hundred percent-

Annie Jacobsen 10:01 They're both the supreme leader.

Speaker 10:02 Yes.

Annie Jacobsen 10:03 The, you know, and this speaks to the revolutionary nature of Iran, which has been, you know, taking place since nineteen seventy-nine. You know, in the news today, people hear the, um, IR, you know, the, the, Ir-Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Speaker 10:19 Guard.

Annie Jacobsen 10:19 And it's so important to understand that word revolution because, and you can speak to this better than any of us, but Iran has been holding on to this idea that, or rather the regime has, that we are the revolutionary force against America. That is why the chant is always death to America. The wound of nineteen-- of pre-nineteen seventy-five, the wound of America meddling and having the Shah as its puppet is as inflamed or was as inflamed two days ago as it was the day after the revolution in nineteen seventy-nine.

Steven Bartlett 10:56 I think that's probably important context we mitch- missed, which was the US got involved in the Shah and how he governed Iran.

Benjamin Radd 11:04 It's a fascinating period. In nineteen fifty-one, so basically under the Iranian constitution, the Shah, the king, has the authority to select the prime minister with the consent of parliament. The consent part is really nominal. And so Mosaddegh, who is a senior member of parliament and also a member of the previous royal dynasty, is distantly related. This, um, elderly statesman who the, the Shah out of sort of courtesy after having gone through a successive list of prime ministers says, "Okay. I'm gonna appoint him prime minister." So he wasn't democratically elected. He was the-- He was elected to parliament, but from there, the Shah selected him to be prime minister. Mosaddegh nationalized the oil company, the Anglo-American oil company, which was owned primarily by the British. This angered the British, who in turn blockaded Iran's ports and basically shut down its oil, um, industry and creating a national crisis. Um, and Mosaddegh was sort of amassing additional powers within himself, uh, for himself, basically overstepping the authority that he had. Even though he had the support of a good deal of the public, as it became obvious that this was a, a bad move, especially in the eyes of, um, Iran's international trading partners-And it was causing Iran to be, um, isolated. There was pushback towards him, and then he was removed. The British had wanted, MI6 had wanted to overthrow him, basically get him removed, and they, um, tried to recruit the United States to help. Um, President Truman refused to, uh, engage in this earlier. Eisenhower comes in, is more receptive under CIA, CIA Director Allen Dulles to actually engage in this, called Operation TP Ajax, led by Kermit Roosevelt, who is the CIA agent, uh, officer tasked with this. And then the Americans and the British basically help foment a crowd that is a part of the movement that removes Mossadegh. Now, whether it's a common, I think, a misconception that the US CIA was behind it, the British had a bigger role in, in this. The, um, Americans were more of the junior partner, but they became sort of the public face of it.

Speaker 13:02 Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Radd 13:03 But Mossadegh was not this overwhelmingly popular, democratically elected figure either. The history is more complicated. And regardless, um, there have been many prime min-- there were many prime ministers after him. Um, and so he was known as a nationalist because he believed that Iran's oil should be nationalized and not really beholden to British interests, and that created a lot of, uh, resentment and animosity. But that began the US-Iranian relationship really solidified when the Shah returned. He didn't leave, really. He just sort of took himself out of the country for a bit, but he never stepped down. Um, and while this was all being resolved, then he comes back, and then the, the US-Iranian relationship continues all the way through '79.

Speaker 13:41 So the UK and the US have been meddling in Iran for a long time and kind of, you know, uh, exerting their will.

Benjamin Radd 13:48 The UK since the 19th century, by far. The UK is, has been the dominant colonial force in, in modern Iranian history.

Speaker 13:55 And they lose that power in the sort of 1980s, early 1980s because the Khomeini comes in.

Benjamin Radd 14:01 The British lose that power with the fall of, pretty much the fall of the empire in the 1940s-

Speaker 14:05 Yeah

Benjamin Radd 14:05 ... after World War II and the United States in '79, exactly.

Speaker 14:08 And then since then, the UK and the US haven't been able to sort of exert control and their will over Iran and it's-

Annie Jacobsen 14:14 Zero. Zero. There's not even an embassy there because of course they took our embassy or they took over the embassy. I mean, it's been, and it's been like ground zero of nothing for the CIA's power, for any American power really, for any Western power.

Speaker 14:26 We call it a black box.

Annie Jacobsen 14:27 Yeah.

Speaker 14:27 It's a rogue nation. It's a black box of information. A rogue nation is a, is one of a handful of countries around the world that follow no international norms. Um, North Korea is a rogue nation.

Annie Jacobsen 14:37 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 14:38 Uh, Belarus is a rogue nation. Cuba is a rogue nation. Venezuela was a rogue nation. These countries that completely stand separate from the, the norms of an international society. And in Iran's case, it also became this black box where it did not allow foreigners in, especially not Westerners. It closed down its embassy. The traditional methods for collecting intelligence were very difficult, and geographically it's so far away and so far outside of the, the sphere of influence for the United States that in terms of intelligence and military prioritization, it just fell to the bottom of the list.

Annie Jacobsen 15:14 And yet look exactly where it is. It's right in the middle of the East and to Benjamin's point, oil, oil, oil. It's always about oil. There's always a component of oil.

Speaker 15:23 And there are so many other oil options in that region besides Iran, right? Saudi Arabia, UAE, uh, Bahrain, Qatar, they've, they've, they've got-- The United States could partner with other Arab countries to get what they wanted without having to deal with Iran.

Speaker 15:39 So explain to me in simple terms why Trump right now has decided that this is the best time to attack Iran. I wanna start with you, Andrew. What's your point of view on that? The full picture of what his motivation is. I think the question that you just asked is the most prescient question-

Annie Jacobsen 15:57 Mm-hmm

Speaker 15:57 ... that we will talk about today. Why? Why now? Why is it being communicated the way it's being communicated? Why was it executed the way it was executed? So why is now the very, the best of all times? I frankly don't think it is. I think that's the narrative that's being communicated to the world and to the public. Um, what Donald Trump did in attacking Iran goes against what the ODNI report assessed for the big- the most likely threats a-against the United States in her 2000-- in the ODNI's 2005 threat assessment. It goes against the, uh, Department of War's 2026 National Defense Strategy, and it goes against the White House's National Security Strategy, these massive doctrinal-

Annie Jacobsen 16:40 Mm-hmm

Speaker 16:40 ... annual assessments for how the United States will k- will protect national security. The attack against Iran goes contrary to all three of those in terms of priority and action. So why now? Why the way that we've done it? I can't answer it in any kind of logical way. What's the non-logical answer? It's a distraction. It's international pressure with Israel. It's a cheap win after a series of losses. It's, uh, a last-ditch effort before he understands he, that Donald Trump and, and his party will lose control of the House i-in the midterms this year.

Annie Jacobsen 17:20 I have a little bit of a different take. Shall I?

Speaker 17:21 Mm-hmm.

Annie Jacobsen 17:22 Um, I believe the current administration is led as a completely top-down situation. In other words, s-like sole presidential authority. This current president is very enraptured with power and with, um, prowess, with effectiveness. And on the heels of Maduro and maybe even the cartel leader in Mexico, I believe that the current president saw a moment of, of intense weakness that had been building, no doubt. And in warring in general, when, when looking at it theoretically like someone like myself, the decapitation strike is the ultimate strike. It's literally like it sounds when you can-- it comes from cut off the head of the snake, and that is exactly what just happened

Steven Bartlett 18:18 Why, why though? Why, why did he do that?

Annie Jacobsen 18:20 Well, I cannot tell you why, but I can tell you what, what we all know that this happened. So if you reverse engineer what happened, I think it become-- there's only one conclusion, which is that th- I would think the current presidents had wanted to do this and was waiting till he had the intelligent, the good and the intel- and the intelligence part of it is beyond remarkable. Like, how they, how the CIA and NSA and, you know, probably DIA and NGA, all of these intelligence agencies, of which there are many, not just the CIA, were able to get that information to the president in that exact moment and make that strike and decapitate the leadership that has been in power since 1979.

Steven Bartlett 19:08 When they talk about the motives here, Trump will often cite nuclear weapons as the motive, saying he didn't want i- uh, Iran to get nuclear weapons. Is, is that what's going on here in your point of view?

Andrew Bustamante 19:19 The two thousand twenty-five National Threat Assessment that was produced by the ODNI in March, so less than a year old, specifically says that Iran was unlikely to pursue the development of nuclear enrichment or nuclear weapons. That was the assessment of the d- the ODNI. And that instead, their primary concern was that Iran was gonna r- focus resources into the research of biological and chemical weapons. So the fact that in March of twenty twenty-five, the ODNI, the assessment of all intelligence agencies-

Annie Jacobsen 19:47 Mm

Andrew Bustamante 19:47 ... said Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon. And then after the strike in June of the same year, where we dropped bunker busters in F- in Fordow, further obliterating their nuclear enrichment capability and obliterating their program, we have two documents that say they're not developing it. We have another series of attacks that says it's obliterated, and yet we're still saying that we need to attack Iran because of WMD. We've heard that story before. We've heard that WMD is a just-- that the concern of WMD is a just cause for war, and that was when we invaded Iraq in 1992.

Steven Bartlett 20:20 So what do you think the real motivation there is, therefore is?

Andrew Bustamante 20:22 It's very similar to what Annie is saying, th-that we have a current administration that is president down. It's fascinating if you read the official documentation because when you read the Department of War's National Security Strategy, what you hear more than any other word is Donald Trump. Our president, Donald Trump, is leading America through our president, Donald Trump, the great Donald Trump. Like the-- it's incredible. When you hear the speeches that come out of Marco Rubio's mouth or Pete Hegseth's mouth, what do you hear more than any other term? You hear the name of the president. Usually, you hear we or the government or this administration. It's not around a personality. So it's a very interesting situation because if there's so much of a person at stake here, and everybody surrounding the office of the president is only there because they are respecting, kissing the ring of the personality in the center. Benjamin, I-

Annie Jacobsen 21:12 And I'm g- I'm gonna add to that further just for a moment, if I may, because on that point, the button on that is that if you-- I watch the president, the current president's speeches to sort of, you know, discern things, and you can often see-- get your answer right there. And in one of the speeches, either this morning or yesterday, he mentioned that the Ayatollah tried to kill him. And it's, to me, it's like, oh, that's the tit for tat. You know, again, top-down, or you could say schoolboy sandbox. I say that as the mother of two boys. You know, this human behavior that is way outside the norm of, you know, intelligence reports and assessments and these long monographs that may or may not actually be effective. I mean, you know, the biggest s-surprises of the past forty years, the Berlin Wall falling and 9/11 were completely unseen by any intelligence report. So there is an argument that those intelligence reports are, a, as good as a coin toss.

Andrew Bustamante 22:16 So I wanna come to that point because the very fact that we have an Islamic Republic is a direct result of a failure of American intelligence to see that threat as early as 1976, '77. A failure to inform then President Carter to do the necessary, take the necessary steps to h- support the Shah and to neutralize that threat. So the United States' track record in Iran for the last forty or fifty years is abysmal-

Annie Jacobsen 22:40 Mm

Andrew Bustamante 22:41 ... when it comes to intelligence, uh, and when it comes to statecraft. And so there's that legacy, number one. Number two, October 7th, 2023, the Hamas attack against Israel changed the dynamic entirely. That attack surprised Israeli intelligence, it surprised Americans, it surprised almost anybody watching. Nobody thought Hamas was going to do that when they did it and the means in which they did it. So all of a sudden, that forced a recalibration, a recalculation of what's at stake, what could happen. If we wait for an imminent threat till we see actually the sign outside the door, it's too late. So from the president's perspective, to answer your, uh, original question, why now? Why do this? I believe the October 7th attacks, and it's not at the behest of Israel necessarily. It's the idea that Iran, we know, finances Hamas, subsidizes Hamas, trains Hamas, equips Hamas, provides, um, logistical, uh, support of, uh, on, on many levels so that Hamas can be what it was, and Hezbollah also. So you have these destabilizing non-state groups in the Middle East wreaking havoc, destabilizing, causing, uh, causing chaos. You're the United States. You're also dealing with a nuclear threshold state. So Iran may or may not have a nuclear weapons program, but they exceeded the twenty percent enrichment that they were allowed to do under the Non- Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. They, they violated IAEA safeguards. They, they lied. So you take all of this together. This is a regime that can't be trusted, that chants "Death to America," which is more than Saddam Hussein ever did, and is funding groups that had a res- that up until 9/11, Iran was behind more acts of terror that cost American lives than any other state or non-state group in the world. 9/11 changed that, but up until that, the Marine barracks bombing, um, in, in the 1980s, terrorist attacks throughout Europe, South America-

Annie Jacobsen 24:26 U.S. embassy

Andrew Bustamante 24:27 ... U.S. embassy, absolutely. The USS Cole.

Annie Jacobsen 24:28 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Bustamante 24:29 All right. So-

Benjamin Radd 24:30 This is a, we've, we've been at war from the president's perspective with Iran since they took our hostages, for which they've never atoned for, they've never been held to account for. So if you take that calculus and then now we're in a post-October 7th world with a nuclear threshold state, what happened that changed was last year's six-day, uh, 12-day war in June created an opportunity. It weakened Iran enough and its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas weakened. If there's an opportunity to finally address this 47-year-old conflict, this was the window to do it. That is why I believe, rightly or wrongly, the president took the action when he did.

Speaker 25:07 That doesn't make it the best window, and that's what we're being told is that it was the last best window.

Benjamin Radd 25:12 I don't think it was the last best window, but it was a window.

Speaker 25:14 I agree.

Benjamin Radd 25:14 Or at least from their perspective it was, it was a window. You've got everyone weakened. You've got the, the regime less popular than it's ever been. I mean, we saw the protests in January that led to the, the, you know, the, the bloodbath that, you know, uh, upwards of 30,000 people killed on January 8th and 9th. This was, you know ... Th- this r- this regime is at its lowest, lowest point, both in terms of domestic credibility and soft power and ability to, to use proxies to carry out its will. Why not strike it now would be the logic.

Speaker 25:43 I mean, I can give lots of reasons why you wouldn't strike it. It's, it's, it's violating international law. It sets a dangerous precedent. It creates instability. There are Americans dead, Emiratis dead, uh, Saudis dead, for what? For, for, for something that was already on the precipice of dying itself. But it's-

Benjamin Radd 26:01 It's been dying for 40 years now

Speaker 26:02 So why not let it run its course?

Benjamin Radd 26:04 Because w- because what more damage is it going to do? What more October 7th can we see?

Speaker 26:10 Arguably less than anything that's already been done. So it's like taking action on ... It's like putting down the dead dog after it's done all of its damage.

Annie Jacobsen 26:17 It wasn't ... Well, you ... I don't think that you could say to the families of the 30,000 some people who were murdered by the regime just earlier, you know, in January-

Benjamin Radd 26:26 Thank you. Yeah

Annie Jacobsen 26:26 ... that it's a dead dog. I don't. I think they would disagree.

Speaker 26:28 That's ... It's their country. It's their people. It's their, it's their decision. It's their right to self-determination.

Annie Jacobsen 26:36 I'm, I'm not saying, I'm not saying it's correct what was done. I'm w- I'm just simply telling, saying the facts of that, which I agree with, you know, unilaterally, that, that the weakened situation was perceived by this administration as the moment to strike.

Speaker 26:49 Agreed.

Annie Jacobsen 26:49 And what is done is done.

Speaker 26:51 Agreed.

Annie Jacobsen 26:51 And so I think what's more interesting to me is, you know, observing how America is dealing with this. I mean, we are in our own crisis, America, our own serious crisis, and there are crises around the world, particularly in this area, and without having a crystal ball, none of us know. And I think that w- what will happen in the next two weeks will be profoundly telling. Interestingly, people will say, "This was a good move," or, "This will, was a bad move," which in and of itself is a bizarre theater because y- your point is correct. You've got, you know, America taking action in a place that's not its, not its backyard.

Speaker 27:32 That's a sovereign country.

Annie Jacobsen 27:33 Yes. And to your point, you've got, you know, decades of a menace that is now off the table.

Speaker 27:41 It, I-

Annie Jacobsen 27:41 Maybe

Speaker 27:41 ... I would disagree with that.

Annie Jacobsen 27:42 Maybe.

Speaker 27:42 Exactly. We don't know.

Annie Jacobsen 27:44 Maybe. Yes.

Speaker 27:44 And, and the worst part is that in the lead up to this, Iran's relationship with the, with Russia and China and, and other countries that are successfully countering American influence worldwide, had grown closer than ever before. And-

Annie Jacobsen 27:57 I think they're fair weather friends that just turn on them in a second.

Speaker 28:00 It's-

Steven Bartlett 28:00 What are you concerned about-

Annie Jacobsen 28:01 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 28:02 ... Andrew?

Speaker 28:02 So, so there's a number of things here. So first of all, with the removal of Maduro in Venezuela, which happened less than 60 days ago-

Annie Jacobsen 28:09 Mm-hmm

Speaker 28:09 ... and now the killing, the assassination of a, of a leader-

Annie Jacobsen 28:13 The decapitation of the regime

Speaker 28:15 ... which was the same thing you did here when you rendered Maduro, right? It's a decapitation of a regime.

Annie Jacobsen 28:18 No, that, that's different. I'm, I would say if you're going to, you know, extract someone, you haven't killed them, so that's not decapitation. That's extraction.

Speaker 28:26 That's basically swapping out the CEO.

Annie Jacobsen 28:28 Yeah.

Speaker 28:28 This is completely-

Annie Jacobsen 28:29 Yeah

Speaker 28:29 ... reforming the company or at least trying to.

Benjamin Radd 28:30 I, I agree with that-

Speaker 28:31 Yeah

Benjamin Radd 28:31 ... because, because they were different countries, they operated in different ways. But when you attack the leadership-

Annie Jacobsen 28:36 Mm-hmm

Benjamin Radd 28:36 ... when you attack the head of state, that is protected under international law. Because, because when you do that, you open the gates for everyone-

Annie Jacobsen 28:44 Of course

Benjamin Radd 28:44 ... to do that.

Steven Bartlett 28:44 So what is it, what is at the heart of your concern? Because it sounds like you're saying that this

Steven Bartlett 28:48 wasn't the right time to do this. And, and so what are the unintended consequences that you're foreseeing?

Speaker 28:53 So there is a domino effect that happens with every decision that the United States makes, and now that we have essentially taken this military action against a sovereign country, it opens the door for all sorts of other countries to just unilaterally choose when they're going to take action against another sovereign. Independ- we have created more opportunity for more rogue nations, which is a greater abandonment of an international community, which destabilizes our global trade, our economics, our sense of personal security. The Americans are less secure now than they were four days ago. They are targeted now more than they were four days ago. And if we, if we are coming to the conclusion that we need to make things worse before we can make things better, that's a conversation I guess we can have, it's a debate we can have. But with, with the crisis that we have here at home, with the concerns that exist, with the stated priorities-

Steven Bartlett 29:50 What crisis here at home?

Speaker 29:51 We have an economic crisis here at home, um, an immigration crisis here at home. We have a, a crisis of politics here at home. Like the United States is-

Annie Jacobsen 29:58 I would just say it's tribal warfare here at home. I mean-

Steven Bartlett 30:00 Okay

Annie Jacobsen 30:00 ... I watch it and it's just very-

Speaker 30:02 Sure

Annie Jacobsen 30:02 ... very, very dangerous. Keep going.

Speaker 30:03 No, no, no. It's just now we have just exacerbated that even more, and we've exacerbated that more with an ally in the Middle East that just got done carrying out one of the most destructive a- attacks in history against Gaza.

Benjamin Radd 30:19 You, you brought up something. You talk about sovereignty. Uh, with regards to the January 8th, um, the, the violence committed against the protesters, you said that, that basically it's their own people's self-determination.How d- how does the international community deal with acts of state violence against its own people?

Speaker 30:36 That's-- So we have a c- a word for that, and it's called intrastate conflicts.

Benjamin Radd 30:40 Okay.

Speaker 30:40 Conflict inside of a state, a civil war.

Benjamin Radd 30:42 Right.

Steven Bartlett 30:43 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 30:44 The international community has no responsibility for stepping into a civil war.

Benjamin Radd 30:47 So that was the... This is a great point. This is the debate that the, uh, that the four Allied powers had at the end of World War II when they were convening the Nuremberg trials. You had this idea that we don't have laws to account for how a country or state treats people within its own sovereign borders. The idea is that Germany could do what Germany did within Germany proper, forget about occupied Germany. Within its own borders, it could mistreat anybody because that was German law. And the push was that that's not the world we wanna live in anymore. We wanna live in a world where basically nations cannot do that to people, and that's where the basis of the Nuremberg tribunals came, and that's where we got international law of war crimes, crimes of aggression, genocide, so on and so forth. So the idea is that just because Iran is sovereign, we, we sit back and allow them to do that. It's, it wasn't a civil war because one side was fighting with, with, with knives, machetes, assault rifles. The other side had spoons, wooden sp- you know, I mean, that kind of thing, right? It was so lopsided. It was such an abuse and a, um, asymmetric battle.

Speaker 31:45 Under the Clinton administration, we chose to not be part of the International Criminal Court. We pulled ourselves out of the very same conclusion that you're talking about.

Benjamin Radd 31:54 Yeah, but Nuremberg was not-- But, but there's also the ICJ. There's a UN framework that's independent from the ICC and the Rome Treaty. So all I'm saying is we do have international law that addresses what nations can do to their own people.

Speaker 32:05 And we violated international law by, by run, by attacking a head of state. So what, what is the-- There's no continuity. There's no consistency.

Benjamin Radd 32:13 So-

Speaker 32:13 We choose to do what we choose to do. We choose to support what we choose to support, and we choose to abandon what we choose to abandon. And how, how do you make sense in a world like that? How do you predict the future? How do you manage even raising a family? How do you know where you can travel? How do you decide on investments? How do you-- You can't-

Benjamin Radd 32:29 That is a great point, and I think that's the, that's a, you know, that's a point to be made here is that there's an absence of the enforcement of law internationally, and it's victor's justice, and the dominant will essentially exercise whatever will they want, the law be damned.

Steven Bartlett 32:44 Do you think this

Steven Bartlett 32:45 is part of Trump's, what his motivations are linked to his personal legacy? And I say this a lot because I think sometimes you've got to kind of follow the incentive structure, especially of a president that can't be reelected, who has talked a lot about wanting to win the Nobel Peace Prize, although he's probably never said it directly. And you c- it almost looks like a Trump that's thinking about his legacy ahead of time, and one's legacy is going to be determined by, like, the wars you, you start, the people you take out, the Venezuela situation, the economies seems to be really important to him. Do you think this is he, he's motivated more so by his legacy than, say, someone else?

Speaker 33:17 I do believe that we are in a position where this is the first president we've ever had, and I would love to be wrong. Please disagree with me on this, but I think this is the first president we've ever had that's more focused on personal legacy than professional or political legacy. I think he's thinking about Donald Trump and the name Trump and the Trump fortune and the Trump future more than he's thinking about the image of him on children's bookmarks as a f- as a president of the United States for the rest of the existence of the United States. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't feel like he's motivated by country, by service. He is supposed to be-

Benjamin Radd 33:54 Yeah

Speaker 33:54 ...a public servant.

Benjamin Radd 33:54 It's not, it's not country over par- or party over country. It's brand over country, the Trump brand. I would agree with that, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 34:02 I've never heard a president talking about, "Oh, I might take Greenland, might, might go to Venezuela," um-

Benjamin Radd 34:06 He, he fancies himself a dealmaker. He wants a Nobel Peace Prize. He pr- he prides himself on the number of wars that he's s- he's, he's, he's, uh, um, ended, uh, conflicts that he's solved. I think ideally he would've wanted Iran to end up with a diplomatic solution. He came with terms. I don't think war was a preferred option. I th- he would be much happier if there was an agreement that, you know, allowed everything to kind of stay in place. Iran would abide by nuclear restrictions, missile restrictions, proxy restrictions, and then a Trump casino gets built in, you know, Tehran. That would've made him happy because, yeah, that is about the personal. That is about the brand. That, and it's also he sees that as benefiting the United States, benefiting, uh, the U.S.'s global partners in the region. So, but, but I think a lot of this is personally driven. I w- I, I would agree.

Steven Bartlett 34:49 I also find it quite fascinating that our prime minister in the UK, Keir Starmer, is not being asked about any of this stuff ahead of time. I, I think if we go back a couple of decades, the UK and the US were

Steven Bartlett 34:59 allies. Now it seems like the US is kind of acting as a lone force in the world, and it's funny because, you know, I watched Keir Starmer come out after the attacks have happened, and he clearly had no idea what was gonna happen. Same in Venezuela. Once upon a time, you would've briefed us.

Benjamin Radd 35:13 The president did go to the prime minister about, I think, using Diego Garcia and other bases, um, and was turned down, if I'm not mistaken, right? That, that, so there was some awareness that something was being planned, and, and the prime minister said that the, that the UK government would have no part in any of that.

Steven Bartlett 35:28 What's going on here? What's the, the macro picture of, in terms of the declining world order that we once knew, where we had, where it wasn't just United States running around doing whatever they liked, and other people might be briefed or asked? I mean, I'm interested in looking at outcome, you know, and then kind of looking backwards at how we got there, and I'm also very interested in how divided America is because I really do see it as the greatest weakness. So you can show strength in what just happened, but if you are extremely vulnerable at home, then, and I'm not talking necessarily about Hezbollah terrorist cells being, you know, activated, which may or may not happen. I'm just talking about the, th- the clash of po- political parties in the United States, and to that end, I often look at the past and w- like so we're talking about, you've mentioned, you know, being friendly and having our allies and our f- and I can't help but look at the reaction of the opposing party right now at this action, for better or for worse, but bringing up the Iraq Wa

Annie Jacobsen 36:40 And talking about how we got our allies involved, we went to Congress, and I, as a historian, c-can't help but think, "But wait a minute, the Iraq War was built on faulty intelligence." The Iraq War led us into a 20-year absolute misery with so many people in this area killed and so many more problems metastasizing as a result. And so to, to be selective about what works and what, what, what doesn't work is, to me, as dangerous as a situation as we are in now. And I know that's a little bit skirting away from, you know, giving you an answer as to why what was done was done, or whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. It just simply is very interesting to me because I can't help but see n- you know, being a subject matter expert on the history of the CIA, in particular, I see these actions where it is presidential authority driven since the end of World War II, and to me, that's what this action looks like. So we're in... The new era where we are in, which I find interesting, is where the President of the United States can essentially take what would historically be a covert action operation. You wouldn't even know about it. That would be the idea. Instead, announcing it as a military program, so he's merging the legal authorities of Title 10 and Title 50. And-

Benjamin Radd 38:18 What's that?

Annie Jacobsen 38:19 And of course, the r- average person in the United States isn't like, "Oh, wait a minute, he's merging those authorities," because-

Benjamin Radd 38:24 What, what is auth- what are the Title 10 and Title 50?

Annie Jacobsen 38:26 Well, Title 10 is the military must follow certain laws of war.

Benjamin Radd 38:30 Okay.

Annie Jacobsen 38:30 Okay? And Title 50 says, if the president decides it is a national security threat, he can use the CIA's paramilitary, that is an actual milit- military force. They sheep-dip Tier 1 operators over from the military and take the patches off their shoulders, put them in non-military clothing, and send them out to do military-type work.

Benjamin Radd 38:55 So he's using the military how he wants to use them.

Annie Jacobsen 38:57 Yes, and that's-

Speaker 38:58 He has that right. As the commander in chief, as the chief executive of the United States, the DoD, or now the DoW, and CIA fall under the executive branch. They don't fall under the legislative branch. They don't fall under the, the judicial branch. So the president has, and always has, had the ability to take these types of actions and write executive orders. What's so different here is that while we're talking about CIA and CIA being used, um, by the president in his exercise of authority, what we're all not talking about, what we're missing, is that CIA has been gutted. This is the same president that went to war with CIA-

Annie Jacobsen 39:39 Mm-hmm

Speaker 39:39 ... in his first term. CIA has gone through massive attrition since then. They were defunded under his first presidency, so Director Ratcliffe is the least used director, the least referenced director. You never hear about him.

Benjamin Radd 39:53 Is he the head of the CIA?

Speaker 39:53 He's the head of the CIA. And, and what I am concerned about is that the CIA I left in 2014 h- was already missing intelligence on Venezuela and s- and Iran. Since then, it's gotten smaller. It's gotten marginalized more. It went to... It's been treated hostilely by the, by the US president, and the CIA that I had started hearing rumors about in the early 2020s, 65% of the intelligence that they were producing was coming from foreign allies. They didn't have the ability to create their own intelligence.

Annie Jacobsen 40:29 Well, what I would also say-

Benjamin Radd 40:29 Outsource it

Annie Jacobsen 40:30 ... what I would-

Speaker 40:30 They've outsourced it, yeah

Annie Jacobsen 40:30 ... what I would also say is that every CIA, sadly, you know, has nostalgia for the former CIA, if you look at history, and believes that their CIA was better than the current CIA. That's just the nature of-

Speaker 40:43 I'm not saying it was better or worse.

Annie Jacobsen 40:44 Yeah.

Speaker 40:45 I'm just saying the intelligence that the CIA is using now, I, I would argue that we keep talking about CIA, and you keep seeing CIA in the headlines, and it's actually not the CIA.

Annie Jacobsen 40:55 But, but hang on.

Benjamin Radd 40:56 Exactly.

Annie Jacobsen 40:57 But hang on. ODNI didn't, or at least according to, shall we say, The New York Times, which must have come from the White House, CIA provided the intelligence for the decapitation-

Speaker 41:06 Exactly

Annie Jacobsen 41:06 ... strike. So there you go.

Speaker 41:07 That's fake. I don't think that's real.

Annie Jacobsen 41:09 You don't, you don't think it was CIA.

Speaker 41:09 I think that is a shield.

Annie Jacobsen 41:10 Interesting.

Speaker 41:10 Here's the thing.

Annie Jacobsen 41:11 All right.

Speaker 41:11 CIA is the s-

Annie Jacobsen 41:12 And well, how do you think, why do you, based on what?

Speaker 41:14 CIA is the Central Intelligence Agency-

Annie Jacobsen 41:15 Yes

Speaker 41:15 ... which is by design. It means that every other intelligence that comes from every other agency inside-

Annie Jacobsen 41:21 Mm-hmm

Speaker 41:21 ... the DoD, inside of the national security infrastructure, has to come through CIA. Only CIA produces the final product for the president.

Annie Jacobsen 41:28 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 41:28 So therefore, everything is CIA, and CIA contain, and CIA is the one that's in charge of maintaining foreign relationships with foreign intelligence services. So when Israel has an intelligence report that they share with the US president, it goes through the CIA. So ev- all credit and all blame always goes to CIA.

Annie Jacobsen 41:47 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 41:47 That doesn't mean CIA actually had the intelligence themselves.

Benjamin Radd 41:51 So what, who do you think had the intelligence, and why does this matter?

Speaker 41:54 The number one most informed country in the world on the goings-on in Iran is Israel. Tell me if I'm wrong.

Annie Jacobsen 42:00 No, I would agree with that.

Speaker 42:01 There's no way the United States would've been able to launch against Iran without close coordination and incredible intelligence support from Israel.

Annie Jacobsen 42:08 And I'm gonna disagree a little bit.

Benjamin Radd 42:09 So why does it, why does it matter?

Speaker 42:11 Because it means that Israel could be directing the activities of the US military by the intelligence they select to give to the president.

Benjamin Radd 42:19 S- so I wouldn't take that step.

Annie Jacobsen 42:21 Yeah.

Speaker 42:21 [laughs]

Benjamin Radd 42:22 I don't think Israel-

Annie Jacobsen 42:23 Mm-hmm

Benjamin Radd 42:23 ... has a monopoly on intelligence provided. Um, we know that, uh, MI6 has also historically been very active and very capable, probably more so than CIA has been, and in large part because the British government has a embassy, has diplomatic ties, um, has trade and economic ties with Iran. Um, and it's y- and the Islamic regime has seen the UK as a effective sort of pipeline or conduit to the United States and has used that in the past, um, sometimes, you know, to, to better effect than before. But I d- I think that there's a, I think there's sources of intelligence that the United States gets, and Israel is influential, but I don't think it is the sole influencer or the one that pushes it over the edge one way or the other.

Speaker 43:03 I wasn't saying that they're the sole, but-But when it came to Iran, and I think we're saying the same thing, they are-- they don't have the monopoly, but they have the-

Benjamin Radd 43:11 They're the biggest game in town.

Speaker 43:12 Exactly, when it comes to understanding what's happening in Iran.

Annie Jacobsen 43:16 I mean, I'm gonna disagree, uh, because I think that, okay, look at past situations where the United States attempted to do a decapitation strike and then have a regime change. You can look at Iraq. We tried to kill Saddam Hussein, failed, and then a disaster blows up. Libya tried to kill Gaddafi, fails, a disaster blows up. Iran tries to kill the regi- or take-- decapitate the re-regime and succeeds. So y- are you saying that you believe that's because in the other situations, the intelligence was coming from the CIA, who didn't have such great intelligence, and in this situation, the intelligence was coming from Israel, who did?

Speaker 44:04 No, I'm saying that, that a big piece of the opportunity of Iran is tied to the opportunity that was presented to us by our allies in the region. I don't think it's just Israel. Saudi Arabia wants to see the end of Iran, UAE wants to see the end of Iran, Jordan wants to see the end of Iran. There's multiple allies in the region that want to see the end of Iran. But when it came to who had the longest, most reliable human intelligence source network inside Iran, I don't think anybody came even close to comparing with, with Israel.

Benjamin Radd 44:38 And you're saying that was used selectively, meaning?

Speaker 44:40 Because all intelligence that's shared with an ally is selective.

Benjamin Radd 44:43 Of course.

Speaker 44:44 I have 10 pieces. Do I give all 10 pieces to my ally?

Benjamin Radd 44:47 No.

Speaker 44:47 Or do I give just the three pieces that I think will move them off the X?

Benjamin Radd 44:50 Right. But then it-

Annie Jacobsen 44:51 Well, you have to, they had to have those 20 individuals tagged to do their find, fix, and finishing. Period, end of story. It couldn't have happened without it. And I believe that the United States, the CIA, aggregates all that intelligence, sig, you know, sigage, I mean, all the ints to know that. I can't imagine how Israel knew that more than the United States. W- I just, I've, I... That's my, that's where I would-

Speaker 45:17 So listen

Annie Jacobsen 45:17 ...bet my horse.

Speaker 45:18 I mean, just to give you a very quick example, right? You're a hundred percent right, the people have to be tagged. When you tag a cell phone, let's just say we're talking about cell phones.

Annie Jacobsen 45:24 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 45:24 Cell phones give you a geo, a geolocation. Every cell phone signal sends a geotag, but only on the service network that controls that phone. United States doesn't have access to most of the service providers in the Middle East, so you already have to have someone to interlocute the Middle Eastern service provider with the West. And then on top of that, you then have to be able to identify that that selector, that cell phone, belongs to that person. Again, if you think that the United States is so powerful, it has every cell phone of every person around the country, around the world, they're n-

Annie Jacobsen 45:57 I think there's biometric tagging that i- is not necessarily electronic based.

Speaker 46:03 So you're saying that it... I, I appreciate your point of view. The point is that Iran, according to every prioritized list that we have, is on the low end of our priorities. Russia's above them. China's above them. Uh, the cartels across Mexico are above them.

Annie Jacobsen 46:23 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 46:23 So somehow, we had such refined intelligence on-

Steven Bartlett 46:28 What's your conclusion here, Andrew? Because I feel like there's a n- there's a second half of your point that's missing, or like a conclusion that you're, you're pointing towards but not saying.

Benjamin Radd 46:36 Isn't, isn't it just the lowest of the hanging fruits-

Annie Jacobsen 46:38 Mm

Benjamin Radd 46:38 ...of all the ones you mentioned also?

Speaker 46:39 Correct. It doesn't-

Annie Jacobsen 46:40 Yeah.

Speaker 46:40 So what I'm saying is I, it doesn't make sense that we would take this action unless we are really just acting on the behest of our allies for some other kind of gain, a personal gain for the Trump brand, if you will. Some sort of, uh, hegemony that the United States is desperately grasping for because we realize that we don't have that power and influence anymore. And as a result of these actions and actions like what we took in Venezuela, we have now empowered and validated some of the worst regimes in the world that we've always held accountable for taking the same kind of actions that we take.

Steven Bartlett 47:16 And

Steven Bartlett 47:17 who are you concerned about as it relates to other regimes?

Speaker 47:19 China, Russia. This, Russia, I believe that a big part of the reason that, that Zelensky hasn't been assassinated by Russia is because that would be crossing a red line. That would, that would infuriate Europe and the United States because you don't attack world leaders. We just gave them permission to do so. The same thing in Taiwan. We can asset... Now China has free reign to just assassinate one person in Taiwan, and, and that's just them. We're not even talking about Pakistan and India. We're not talking about any of the border disputes that are happening anywhere else across Asia or warlords in Africa. We just validated these, these illegal, inhumane, uh, extrajudicial processes all over the world.

Benjamin Radd 47:59 So unlike these other world leaders, Khamenei was, his, his, his, his philosophy, his entire ideology was, was, w- is built on death to America-

Annie Jacobsen 48:10 Mm-hmm

Benjamin Radd 48:10 ...among death to other things. You don't have other world leaders, you don't have the president of Taiwan saying, "Death to China." You don't have Zelensky even saying, "Death to Russia." He might want Putin dead, but he's not sort of, he doesn't want the demise of the entire Russian Republic. Uh, a-and so th- I think this is where Khamenei stands apart, where it is, it is a, a, a movement which became a system of government predicated on the demise and the destruction of, of the United States.

Steven Bartlett 48:37 What's interesting with-

Benjamin Radd 48:38 How do you counter that? Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 48:39 With, what's interesting with the term stands apart is I was imagining therefore a spectrum, and the minute it becomes a spectrum, it becomes somewhat subjective. So, you know, one might say, "Well, we think they wanted to hurt us." Whereas before in my head, when, when I grew up, I always used to see these wars and go, "Why don't they just... They know where the, the guy lives." Like, I know that sounds like a simplified bit-

Annie Jacobsen 48:56 Mm

Steven Bartlett 48:56 ...but they know where he is. Why don't they just take him out? And, and it was always, it always felt to me that that was off the table in war. You can't just assassinate a leader 'cause you don't like them or you're having a sort of geopolitical disagreement. And it's actually only in the last sort of year or two that I've thought, "Okay, maybe it is free reign to just fly in and snatch someone out of bed with their wife," which is what happened in Venezuela.

Benjamin Radd 49:15 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 49:15 And then seeing this, that you can just drop a bomb on them wherever they are, um, it does kind of make you

Benjamin Radd 49:20 You know, wonder maybe this is now on the table. I've never really seen that in my lifetime. I mean, I know there were some things that went on in Libya and, and Iraq and so on, but to snatch a prime minister out of bed with his wife and fly him over and with photos of... I go, "Wow, this is, this is a new type of, uh, geopolitical action."

Speaker 49:38 It's what the d-

Annie Jacobsen 49:38 Yeah

Speaker 49:38 ... it's what our secretary of state is calling the golden era of the United States.

Benjamin Radd 49:44 Hmm.

Speaker 49:44 The old world is gone. Like, these are the, this is the narrative coming out and, and being spread by the representation of the free world. France, their, uh, Macron just this morning stated that to be free, you must be feared. This is the world that we're creating? Death to America? Guess how much I care about that. Guess how much I care that a poor, broke-ass, far away fucking piddly dink country says, "Death to America." Guess how afraid I am of that. Zero. And guess how afraid multiple people who have led the United States have been afraid of that. They, they're not. You can say it all you want, doesn't matter. And when you do, when you do carry out an attack-

Benjamin Radd 50:26 Right

Speaker 50:26 ... against the USS Cole, for every one attack that's successful, 25 of them are thwarted. That's the p- that's the benefit of being the most powerful military in the world. You don't have to w-w-worry about everybody who chants in the streets. How many people disown their kids 'cause they say, "I hate you" when they're teenagers? You don't ca- you're like, "Give it time. They'll grow up. They'll be fine. They've gotta go through their shit before they realize what it's like to be grownups." That's what we say about our children.

Annie Jacobsen 50:54 No, but the other argument-

Speaker 50:55 You can say, you can say the same thing about a country that just came to power in 1979. They're less than 100 years old. What do, what do they know about how to actually be a country? What do we know? We're only 250 years old. Um-

Annie Jacobsen 51:11 I mean, it's hard, it's hard to swallow that, like, you know, it's okay if you have, like, a horrible, you know, murderous, brutal regime making women run around in hijabs and ruining entire s-thousands of years old Persian civilization. Just-

Speaker 51:24 Have you been to this part of the world?

Annie Jacobsen 51:26 I, I have not been there, but-

Speaker 51:27 That's what they, that's normal life there.

Annie Jacobsen 51:29 Well, I, I-

Speaker 51:30 That's, what do you think is happening in the, in the Hermit Kingdom in North Korea? I mean, shoot. Look, Afghanistan, we left Afghanistan and knew that that's what exactly what the Taliban was gonna do.

Benjamin Radd 51:39 Right. But, but so we're selectively choosing?

Annie Jacobsen 51:40 That what's happening, what's happening here is not nor- since '79 is not normal. But, but just to go back to one step for a second, who do we know launched the missiles that killed the supreme leader and all the other, um, in the, uh, hierarchy?

Speaker 51:51 The c- I think the credit is going to the United States.

Annie Jacobsen 51:54 N-no.

Benjamin Radd 51:54 No.

Annie Jacobsen 51:55 No.

Benjamin Radd 51:55 No.

Annie Jacobsen 51:55 No, the credit is going to Israel for it.

Benjamin Radd 51:57 So, so, so Israel is the one-

Annie Jacobsen 51:59 Yeah

Benjamin Radd 51:59 ... that ef-essentially pushed the button, pulled the trigger-

Annie Jacobsen 52:01 Yes, yes

Benjamin Radd 52:01 ... what have you. The U.S. provided in-

Annie Jacobsen 52:02 The United States provided the intelligence

Benjamin Radd 52:03 ... I-exactly.

Annie Jacobsen 52:04 And the Unit-

Benjamin Radd 52:04 In which case then, does, does Israel have the prerogative to take out a head of state that was, as, you know, essentially the only nation state, might I remind you, that, uh, came out in support of the October 7 attacks? It was only Iran, not even North Korea came out and said anything. No one else did. Khamenei absolutely said this was, you know, justified-

Annie Jacobsen 52:21 Well, not only that, on October 8th, he directed Hezbollah to join the war.

Benjamin Radd 52:25 So therefore-

Annie Jacobsen 52:25 You know, a very badly-

Benjamin Radd 52:26 ... is he a fair, is he a fair target for Israel?

Speaker 52:28 That's a great question. Is he a combatant?

Annie Jacobsen 52:30 Yeah.

Benjamin Radd 52:32 If a, if a, if a-

Speaker 52:33 Can you answer it?

Benjamin Radd 52:33 ... head of state-

Speaker 52:34 Better, better

Benjamin Radd 52:34 ... authorizes funds, motivates, endorses, and basically encourages and shoves out the door your attacker, do you then have a right to go after them?

Speaker 52:42 That's, I think that's, maybe that's the $10,000 question here.

Benjamin Radd 52:45 Okay.

Speaker 52:45 Because, because if you are will- if you're willing to see the, the leader of every country as an, as a combatant, they are the heads of the military, the president is the, the commander-in-chief of the military. If they are a combatant, they are a legal target. So if they're a legal target, why is it against international law to attack head of state? And even more, what's the acceptable collateral damage? Because Israel is notorious for assassinations around the world.

Benjamin Radd 53:09 Right.

Speaker 53:09 It's, it's what makes them so difficult for other people to ally with because we don't support assassinations, and most assassinations are not legal combatants. They're scientists. That's a civilian. They're experts. That's a civilian. They're heads of industry. That's a civilian. They're generals, but not in a hot conflict.

Benjamin Radd 53:28 But the world-

Speaker 53:28 That makes them a non-combatant

Benjamin Radd 53:29 ... the spaces you're talking about, the line between civilian and someone who works for the government or is on a government-funded weapons program or something of that nature, tho-those lines are blurred in the Middle East, we know that.

Speaker 53:40 Those lines are blurred everywhere.

Benjamin Radd 53:42 There isn't a demarcation between them. Exactly, so-

Speaker 53:42 A civilian who works for a company that's hired by the U.S. military, is that person a combatant?

Benjamin Radd 53:46 Okay, but it, but those distinctions are, are, are far more subtle in the Middle East w- and especially when you're a scientist working for a state nuclear program.

Speaker 53:56 That you're being forced to work for because you're one of the few scientists that can do it.

Benjamin Radd 54:00 I, I don't know. Are they forced to work for?

Speaker 54:02 Absolutely.

Benjamin Radd 54:02 I mean, I mean, there are-

Speaker 54:03 Iran, they're-

Benjamin Radd 54:03 ... there are defectors. There are those who, who, who opt, and then there are those who double down and become religious cheerleaders supporting what the government's doing. I mean, the point I'm making is that you saying it doesn't give you the international, under international law, the right to take out a head of state. What if it was self-defense?

Speaker 54:19 It's-

Benjamin Radd 54:20 It's-

Speaker 54:20 That's not what it was.

Annie Jacobsen 54:21 I have a counter-narrative here. W-just, just to throw it out and kind of switch up the, the discussion here. You know, this administration is very interested in, in social media, and for that reason, I am, too. And I look at, I saw a meme that was going around immediately after this, um, decapitation event so quickly, in fact, it made me wonder, like, who pushed that out that quickly?

Speaker 54:47 [laughs]

Annie Jacobsen 54:47 And it's a white sheet of paper with all the months of the year, of 2026, and January, there's a picture of Maduro. February, there's a picture of the Mexican cartel leader. March, one day off, there's a picture of the supreme leader of Iran, and then there's a question mark in the other months. And it made me think and sort of wonder, speculate, is this messaging to Putin that he better start negotiating-

Speaker 55:17 No

Annie Jacobsen 55:17 ... with Trump?

Speaker 55:18 Nope, Putin's a whole different beast. What, what that's a message to is the leader of Cuba.

Benjamin Radd 55:22 Yeah, Cuba I was gonna say is next.

Speaker 55:24 And if you follow what the United States

Benjamin Radd 55:26 Considers to be the four state sponsors of terrorism. The only one that remains after Cuba is North Korea.

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Steven Bartlett 57:39 Why does the US care about Cuba? What's the context there? What, what does the US want with Cuba?

Annie Jacobsen 57:44 Well, Cuba's 90 miles off the coast of Florida for starters. So geographically it's very dangerous. Cuba was where the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles there, you know, almost bringing the United States to the brink of nuclear war during the Kennedy administration.

Benjamin Radd 58:04 It's one of the only countries in the Western hemisphere that does not fall under the United States' sphere of influence.

Steven Bartlett 58:09 I actually saw this yesterday.

Speaker 58:11 The Cuban government is talking with us and they're in a big deal of trouble, as you know. They have no money. They have no anything right now, but they're talking with us and maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba.

Annie Jacobsen 58:28 Exactly.

Steven Bartlett 58:28 So Trump says that-

Annie Jacobsen 58:29 Precisely

Steven Bartlett 58:30 ... maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba and he said that two days ago.

Annie Jacobsen 58:33 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 58:35 So Cuba's next and then North Korea. Do you-- They wouldn't, North Korea have nuclear weapons though, don't they, Annie? So-

Annie Jacobsen 58:40 Yes, they do.

Steven Bartlett 58:41 I, I, I always wonder that actually does getting to a point where you have nuclear weapons kind of mean the US will leave you alone.

Annie Jacobsen 58:47 Absolutely.

Annie Jacobsen 58:48 I think that part of all of this is the, the sort of elephant in the room is that you cannot, you know, the United States will not let anyone else join the nuclear nine. North Korea was the last example of that mistake during the Clinton administration being told by the leader of North Korea, "Oh, no, no, we're not gonna have a nuclear program." And then him not, you know, deciding by sort of committee and all his sage advisors and following and talking to Congress and all of that, we're not gonna attack North Korea. That would be unacceptable. That was the Democratic President Clinton's position, and as a result, North Korea developed nuclear weapons and now has nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons systems to strike the United States and has demonstrated, you know, a desire if provoked or actually has said if provoked it would do so. And so, you know, you, that was not going to happen with Iran. Certainly not on this watch and probably not on any watch.

Steven Bartlett 59:53 Is there a bit of an unspoken rule geopolitically where if you get to nuclear weapons, you can do whatever the hell you want and-

Benjamin Radd 59:59 It's, it's the ultimate deterrence.

Annie Jacobsen 1:00:00 Yeah, absolutely. You can't mess with somebody who has a nuclear weapon and you, and you w- and you don't.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:05 One of my friends was asking me this morning whe- how the situation with Iran getting nuclear weapons is any different from the situation with North Korea having nuclear weapons or is it the same?

Annie Jacobsen 1:00:15 Well, it's the same thing. It's only perhaps wor-- Well now this regime is, is in, is up. We don't know what will happen with it, but having, you know, an Esh, correct me on this pronunciation, uh, you know, the idea that the Shia idea that the sort of apocalyptic end is not necessarily a bad thing.

Benjamin Radd 1:00:34 Oh, the arrival of the Mahdi-

Annie Jacobsen 1:00:36 Yes. Yes

Benjamin Radd 1:00:36 ... and, and, and, and that whole thing, right. Sort of creating the conditions for that to come about.

Annie Jacobsen 1:00:39 Yes. There's a, there's kind of a f- a, a undergirding the Islamic regime's thinking is this idea, and that's very dangerous to the idea that we don't wanna have a nuclear war.

Benjamin Radd 1:00:51 Though that regime is not suicidal. I, I, I will sort of state that. Khamenei was, was prepared to die for his cause, but he was not suicidal in the sense that he would go out and sort of, you know, um, if he could, I don't think start a nuclear war that he knew his, his country was gonna get destroyed fighting. Uh, that is I think, you know, one distinction, and I'm not saying North Korea is suicidal, but definitely what remains of the government there is not, is not suicidal. Um, I don't think there is ideological diehards as we saw in the founding fathers of which Khamenei was the last one. So that changes it a little bit now that he's dead, you know, um, there's, uh, the, um-A philosopher, Eric Hoffer, he, he sort of wrote that great causes start as movements, then they become businesses, then they become rackets.

Annie Jacobsen 1:01:34 Mm.

Benjamin Radd 1:01:34 Okay? So Khomeini mo- Khomeini's movement that started in the '70s, that was the movement. It became a business, a enterprise, of which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps profited immensely till it became a racket. And now we're at the racket phase of it, and the only one really left are the racketeering leaders, you know, and, and because the, the, the spiritual leaders are now gone. Um, what happens next I think is sort of ... And, you know, we're now in very much an unknown territory with that.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:59 Andrew, to that point of nuclear weapons, if Iran had already violated, um, many of the things they'd said around nuclear weapons, and they, I think they'd enriched r- uranium to 60% roughly, they would've theoretically continued to go, because they know that if you want the US and o- other people in the region to stay away from you, you gotta get nuclear weapons. And once you get back to that point, then you, no one's gonna mess with you.

Speaker 1:02:19 So I think the assumption is that no one will mess with you with nuclear weapons. I don't think that that is going to be the assumption for much longer. I think that, that Iran recognized that if it could get a path to a deployable nuclear capability, whether it's a rocket or whether it's a missile or even if it's a truck with a nuke in the trunk, they had options. 60% enrichment, they have op- I mean, that's a dirty bomb. They have options there. I mean, with just nuclear waste, they have options to cause real damage. But enriched m- military grade, sustainable, kind of permanent state nuclear capability is a much higher level of enrichment than that. And that's a- arguably what they have in North Korea. Their deployability, their capability for actually putting it on a rocket and having the rocket hit where it's supposed to hit and not blow up on the launchpad is a little bit different. And for that reason, I think we have to take seriously the fact that if the United States wanted to demonstrate their power against the nuclear capable country, they could do it against North Korea. There's also this concept that our current military doctrine under Hegseth has applied that no other president has ever applied, and no other department of defense, department of war has applied, and that's this idea called burden-sharing. According to the Department of War, their doctrine now is a doctrine of burden-sharing, which means they will force the burden of a national security interest on A- American allies. An example is they go into Iran with a small naval force. They bomb Iran knowing very well that Iran is going to spread the pain across our allies in the Middle East. To the United States Department of War, that is us, that is our allies sharing the burden. If they wanna be our allies, they have to do this. Same thing is happening with Ukraine and with Russia. If you want, if Europe, if you want to counter Russia, you must share the burden with the United States. It also gives the, the United States now carte blanche to go anywhere it wants with a limited force, stir up a hornets' nest, and then let everybody else pay the price.

Annie Jacobsen 1:04:20 Well, in terms of the Middle East, it, it, it certainly was a, an effective move because, you know, all of these six countries that Iran has now bom- you know, attacked in the past 48 hours are now very angry with Iran. So the burden-sharing has gone from kind of like, "This is a fight that we're not in," to, "This is a fight we are in." And-

Speaker 1:04:45 I don't think that anybody has taken any offensive actions against Iran except the United States and Israel.

Annie Jacobsen 1:04:50 But they're not happy, but they're not happy with that.

Speaker 1:04:52 They weren't happy before.

Benjamin Radd 1:04:53 Oh, they've ... But the, the, the statements they've put out are some of the strongest-

Annie Jacobsen 1:04:56 Yes

Benjamin Radd 1:04:56 ... that we've seen in years.

Annie Jacobsen 1:04:57 I mean, you've ne- we've never even seen anything like that.

Benjamin Radd 1:04:59 We've never seen the Gulf States put out what they s- basically, you know, condemning Iran and holding it responsible. It, it's now any pretense that there was a rapprochement, there was some sort of a, a, a coming together is, is now shattered. And, and that's a setback for whatever's left of the Islamic Republic.

Annie Jacobsen 1:05:13 Huge setback.

Speaker 1:05:14 The, the, the power that Iran has over the Middle East is a power of agriculture. Uh, all the countries that we look at, all the oil Kaliki countries can't make their own food. Iran makes their food. So they've always had this weird relationship where they disagree with them politically, they disagree with them religiously, they disagree with them militarily, but they're still allies because of food. The United States has sanctions all over Russia, except in one area, space. We still cooperate with Russia to carve out, because we don't wanna lose their access to the space program.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:47 Do you think we're closer to nuclear war now because of this action?

Speaker 1:05:50 100%.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:51 So you d- you think this has moved us closer to that?

Speaker 1:05:53 100%. And, and I've got pr ... Like, there's proof of that all over the headlines today, because France is deploying air-launched nuclear warheads. Air-launched nuclear warheads. That means small warheads that fit on the ends of airplane rockets. They're deploying them all over Europe. That means France is now taking its nuclear arsenal and spreading it across its European allies.

Annie Jacobsen 1:06:15 That, that is not because of the-

Speaker 1:06:16 The more nuclear proliferation, the more risk of nuclear war.

Benjamin Radd 1:06:18 That could've been j- that's just as much a plot part of the Ukraine and, and-

Annie Jacobsen 1:06:21 That has nothing to do with Iran. That has nothing to do with Iran.

Benjamin Radd 1:06:22 Why? Yeah. That has nothing to do with Iran.

Annie Jacobsen 1:06:24 That-

Benjamin Radd 1:06:24 It happened two days after Iran.

Annie Jacobsen 1:06:25 It has, uh, l- the threat of nuclear war comes from the conflict, in my opinion, comes from the conflict in Ira- from the war in Ukraine-

Speaker 1:06:35 Ukraine, yeah

Annie Jacobsen 1:06:35 ... and comes from Russia, because you have an actual superpower president who has threatened the use of nuclear weapons. Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, so it's n- it's not a nuclear threat.

Speaker 1:06:50 You speak a different nuclear language than I do. Ir- Russia is launching intercontinental ballistic missiles that can't be intercepted. It's got the Oreshnik. What the hell is it gonna be afraid of a warhead on the tip of an airplane? It's not.

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:02 But, but-

Speaker 1:07:02 That's a tactical nuke.

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:04 But I-

Speaker 1:07:04 That's a battlefield nuke.

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:05 But what is your point?

Speaker 1:07:06 My point is that we, the deployment of a nuclear weapon-

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:09 Yeah

Speaker 1:07:09 ... is nuclear war. The deployment of a nuclear weapon.

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:13 Well, wait.

Speaker 1:07:13 If you're talking about-

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:14 Hang on

Speaker 1:07:15 ... mutually assured destruction-

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:16 So are, are you talking about the use of a nuclear weapon, or are you talking about putting a warhead on a aircraft?

Speaker 1:07:21 No, that's, that's been technology for a long time.

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:23 Right. So-

Speaker 1:07:23 Using it in the battlefield-

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:24 But it's not being used in the battlefield. I agree with you 1,000%.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:27 You don't think it's being ... You think it is being used in the battlefield?

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:29 Of course it's not.

Speaker 1:07:29 No, I'm saying it's being deployed. Is that getting us closer to nuclear war? Yes.

Benjamin Radd 1:07:33 Yes, but, but it's not-

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:34 But, but wait. It, it, but-

Benjamin Radd 1:07:34 But it's not because of Iran.

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:35 It has nothing to do with Iran, and what are you talking about being deployed? Because in t- you're talking about France maneuvering where its weaponry is.

Speaker 1:07:43 That's the definition of a deployment.

Annie Jacobsen 1:07:45 That is ... Well, then we're talking about a ... I'm talking about nuclear use. I mean-The United States deploys its nuclear forces all the time by President Trump saying, "I'm moving our submarines,"

Steven Bartlett 1:08:00 Mm-hmm

Annie Jacobsen 1:08:00 ... uh, which is just talk because they're moving anyways. It's, it's the same as Pu- It's threatening when Putin says, "I'm moving at my nuclear," or when he tests, you know, Norway by, uh, popping up right offside, outside of their shores. Those are maneuvers that are very dangerous. I, I absolutely agree.

Steven Bartlett 1:08:21 Annie, but in this particular case-

Annie Jacobsen 1:08:22 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:08:22 ... has the, uh, uh, even from a Russian perspective, has this war in Iran increased the probability that a Putin would use a nuclear weapon?

Annie Jacobsen 1:08:30 In my opinion, absolutely not, no. In my opinion, no. In my opinion, what it does to Putin is it makes him say, "Wow, this president is unpredictable." And to some, to an authoritarian person like Putin, that's a match for him, not someone for him to walk on. And I think that, I'm not, I'm not saying that's a great way for world diplomacy whatsoever. It's not diplomacy. It's just, you know, s- it's just strong-arming one another. But, but we are not, I do not feel at all that this situation makes us closer to a nuclear threat whatsoever.

Benjamin Radd 1:09:16 I agree. I think it's a combination of Ukraine and China's, um, military exercises and action in the South China Sea and the whole sort of what, you know, what we're not seeing. There's this argument that China's watching what's going on with the US and Iran. Here we are depleting our interceptors, our munitions. China's meanwhile stockpiling, you know, its resources. And is it, does this put us at a disadvantage if and when the day comes where China decides to take proactive, aggressive action vis-a-vis to Iran? That's something to think about, and I think that, then I'm worried about the risk of nuclear war in that instance. I don't think Iran by itself in a vacuum is, is moving the needle on that sort of nuclear risk meter.

Annie Jacobsen 1:09:55 To your point, what this is a boon for is the defense contractor world, is the military industrial complex because, for example, part of or why Iran is so weak is because they've used up so many ballistic missiles in their conflict with Israel.

Benjamin Radd 1:10:12 I've, I read today the interceptor-to-missile ratio, something like-

Annie Jacobsen 1:10:15 Yes

Benjamin Radd 1:10:15 ... twenty-five to one, that the interceptors needed to, to, to catch these ballistic missiles that Kuwait, the UAE, Israel is using, they're like upwards of, of-

Annie Jacobsen 1:10:23 Yes

Benjamin Radd 1:10:23 ... ten, 15 times more expensive.

Annie Jacobsen 1:10:25 Yes.

Benjamin Radd 1:10:26 Um, and, and these drones are relatively cheaply made-

Annie Jacobsen 1:10:28 Mm-hmm

Benjamin Radd 1:10:28 ... these Shahed drones that they're using. So, you know, there is that aspect of it too, that Iran can just fire-

Annie Jacobsen 1:10:34 Yes

Benjamin Radd 1:10:34 ... like a madman, all these sort of ex, um, expendable, um, munitions, and meanwhile we're spending three, four, five, 10 times as much to intercept them.

Annie Jacobsen 1:10:42 Yes, although you do see in any kind of conflict like this, you always see new weapons on the battle, and, and that's what happened now, and y- Um, America actually has been copying the Shahed drones, these cheap, we call them the Lucas, these cheap systems that can just go in and, you know, cause havoc without precision, and we deployed them. So I think this was a, I think this was-

Benjamin Radd 1:11:05 Yeah

Annie Jacobsen 1:11:05 ... a long time coming.

Benjamin Radd 1:11:06 Sorry to interrupt you, Steven.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:07 No worries. I, I think this is one of the big questions that a lot of people are asking, which is how long can Iran

Steven Bartlett 1:11:12 fight for in this war, um, and what does that fight look like? Um, th- here in these jars you have, I think it's the relative amount of soldiers that each country has. Now, obviously soldiers are just, goes back to what Obama said about horses and bayonets. They're one form of, um, combat. But I was quite surprised at how big Iran's military is relative to even the US, but other, um, countries in the region. I think they have the biggest military in the region. Is that correct?

Benjamin Radd 1:11:38 So we have to separate between the IRGC and the national army. They serve two different functions.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:44 What are those two things?

Benjamin Radd 1:11:45 The IRGC, uh, which Annie brought up earlier, so the I stands for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, not Iranian. What does that mean? It's protecting the Islamic revolution. It is an ideological army that sits outside of the main structures of power, accountable only to the supreme leader. The national army really goes through the office of the presidency and others, and, you know, even though the supreme leader has a say in it, but the b- the army's job is to protect Iran's borders.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:10 Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Radd 1:12:10 The IRGC's job is to protect the revolution and the ideology and the proxies and everything else that we have come to know about Iran. So if we look at the, if we look at those, if we look at what's in the jar, we have to separate what the national army, which is only, its job is to defend the borders, versus the ideological army.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:27 Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Radd 1:12:27 I'm curious what that would look like if we took out the-

Annie Jacobsen 1:12:30 Mm

Benjamin Radd 1:12:30 ... national army and are left with the ideological force.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:33 Iran have the largest stockpile in the Middle East of missiles, drones, and air defenses, possessing thousands of ballistic cr- cruise missiles and kamikaze drones. This is their primary offensive strength, um, and they have quite a significant defense budget as well. Well, I guess the question I'm trying to get at is, like, how long

Steven Bartlett 1:12:49 can they fight for, and how does that fight-

Annie Jacobsen 1:12:51 Mm

Steven Bartlett 1:12:51 ... look over time? 'Cause I know they shot, they shot hundreds and hundreds of ballistic missiles over the weekend.

Benjamin Radd 1:12:55 Yeah. Israel claims that in the, in the July, in the June war of last year, it, it, um, eliminated about half of Iran, what it believes Iran stockpiles, but also batteries, launchers, basically capability. So if you, whatever it was, let's say they have half of that left, um, I, I've seen s- uh, statis- statistics saying that really they can't go at this rate, um, I- Iran, for more than two to three weeks before they're completely depleted.

Annie Jacobsen 1:13:17 Well, there's also an interesting move that the United States does. While we didn't kill the supreme leader, what we did do was send our B-2s to take out missile, underground missile systems which Iran has.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:29 Which are the aircrafts, right?

Annie Jacobsen 1:13:31 N- no, they're underground. They actually call them missile cities.

Benjamin Radd 1:13:34 The B-2s. Yeah, the B-2s and the bombers.

Annie Jacobsen 1:13:34 The B-2s and the, yes, they came from the United States. And this is a considerable, considerable damage because the two ways in which these sort of rogue nations, whether it's Kor- North Korea or Iran, h- work their missiles is they have them on what are called road mobile launchers so that they cannot be tracked.And targeted, or they bury them deeply underground. And one of the only things that can take out those deeply buried missile sites is a B2, and that's what the United States sent.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:03 So Andrew, how, how do you think this plays out over the coming weeks and months? Because at some point, yeah, they might run out of missiles,

Steven Bartlett 1:14:09 but that doesn't necessarily mean the war is over.

Andrew Bustamante 1:14:10 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:10 I'm presuming that the US don't wanna throw soldiers on the ground in Iran either. So what, h- like how does this play, play out and how long?

Andrew Bustamante 1:14:19 And, and that's one of the major strategic errors that we made in attacking Iran. They have the benefit of time, not us. They can choose how to react, when to react, in what way to react. We don't know if they have a dirty bomb that they're finishing up in some underground bunker right now that's just gonna sit there and wait until American boots on the ground show up. The fact that you guys think that, that current nuclear deployments have nothing to do with what's going on Iran, i-it's, I, I want to respect that opinion, but to me it shows just a lack of military experience and actual strategic intent to kill. Like when you look at how military and intelligence operators are trained to think, we are trained to think through a lens of maximum damage.

Annie Jacobsen 1:15:03 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Bustamante 1:15:04 Iran is thinking through the same window right now, and they're watching what we just did in Afghanistan. Don't forget, we killed Osama bin Laden, who was an ideological figurehead of Al-Qaeda, in 2011 and didn't leave Afghanistan until 2022 when we were, when we gave up. That's another 11 years of war after the guy that we were supposed to kill to end the war. How is... Khamenei is different. Khamenei is different. But how different, I don't know yet. And what are we going to do? The, the new leadership in Iran, what's it gonna be? Is it gonna be a leadership that, that kowtows to the United States? That kowtows to Ir- to Israel? Is it gonna be another shadow government like the Shah, and we're gonna place somebody else and the Iranian people are gonna love it? Or are we leaving a vacuum that China and Russia are gonna step into, and now we're gonna, we're gonna see a strengthened Iran that's strengthened by our largest adversaries in the world? This is the reality of what we've gotta figure out because, because the, whether they launch all their rockets in the next two weeks, that doesn't mean that's the end of the fight. For all we know, it's gonna come back and bite us in six months when some Hezbollah cell lights New York on fire. We don't know. But when it happens, arguably it's gonna be justified.

Annie Jacobsen 1:16:16 To Andrew's point, Iran can wage a war of attrition. It's harder-

Andrew Bustamante 1:16:20 Which means?

Annie Jacobsen 1:16:20 A war of attrition is basically low-level warfare. Think of like death by a thousand cuts, right? I'll just keep poking at you enough to eventually wear you down, destabilize you, weaken you, whereas what you can do is massive retaliation and these big sort of, you know, theatrical strikes. War of attrition is basically grinding l- for the long haul and wearing you down. This is something that to, to his point, Iran is capable of doing and is probably willing to do and sees as the only way that it can survive this is a war of attrition.

Andrew Bustamante 1:16:47 Who leads that?

Annie Jacobsen 1:16:48 The war... It's, it's, it's whatever remnant is left.

Andrew Bustamante 1:16:51 It's how Russia has survived so long.

Annie Jacobsen 1:16:53 But-

Andrew Bustamante 1:16:53 It's a war of attrition.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:54 But, but h- like I'm like, who's the lea- do you need a leader?

Andrew Bustamante 1:16:56 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:56 Or is it just lots of different pockets of people?

Annie Jacobsen 1:16:58 Time will tell. And you know, Hezbollah s- sort of cells around the world will tell us what happens. But I think another way of looking at it, I saw a, a former member of the National Security Council commenting that like yes, cells could be activated in America or they could just fade away. And this is where I don't have a crystal ball and I'm just observing what's happening, but I do think that the, uh, that all of this hangs on the razor's edge of public opinion because d- you know, we, time will tell whether or not this regime falls, whether what you're say- w- if it's either or, but I don't, I don't think that we, I don't think that we can know. I just-

Steven Bartlett 1:17:43 Haven't we been here before to some degree?

Andrew Bustamante 1:17:44 Too many times.

Annie Jacobsen 1:17:45 Yeah.

Andrew Bustamante 1:17:45 Too many times.

Annie Jacobsen 1:17:46 We're always here.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:46 What is the lesson from history that everyone seems to have forgotten?

Andrew Bustamante 1:17:49 That we are shitty learners of history.

Annie Jacobsen 1:17:51 Yeah.

Andrew Bustamante 1:17:51 That's, that's what the lesson is.

Annie Jacobsen 1:17:52 [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 1:17:52 To, to your point of, you know, who the leadership would be, something else that that philosopher I quoted, Eric Hoffer, had said that, you know, mass movements, they don't need a God, but they do need a devil. So to that effect, the leader doesn't matter as much as having an enemy-

Annie Jacobsen 1:18:05 Mm

Steven Bartlett 1:18:05 ... does. That is the... So, so basically, so long as we, the United States or the Western world, is framed as the enemy, that is enough to keep a war of attrition going, absent any figurehead or charismatic leader. And he was a religious figure versus just a political figure.

Andrew Bustamante 1:18:22 He was a religious figure. He's c-

Annie Jacobsen 1:18:23 But to your point, he was a racketeer at the end, by the end.

Andrew Bustamante 1:18:26 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he was running-

Annie Jacobsen 1:18:27 I mean, wouldn't that be so-

Andrew Bustamante 1:18:27 I mean, effectively, yeah

Annie Jacobsen 1:18:28 ... and everyone in, most people in that country knew that.

Andrew Bustamante 1:18:31 A mafia state. Yeah. Absolutely.

Steven Bartlett 1:18:31 Th- thousands of people have gathered in public squares in Tehran to openly weep and mourn his death. Roughly 20% of the population are staunch ideological supporters of him.

Andrew Bustamante 1:18:39 Yeah, 20%, 90 million.

Annie Jacobsen 1:18:40 20%, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:18:41 And it's interesting because you, you, one can imagine that that 20% might grow, especially if the n- the coming months make their lives worse in some way, they experience, I don't know, poverty or whatever else, and, and then, you know, friends die because of this war. S- it doesn't take long for narrative to turn and-

Andrew Bustamante 1:18:58 S- so that's what everyone's been warning about, that you strike Iran, this was the warning last June. You strike Iran, you're gonna get rally round the flag. The people that are secularist now are gonna turn and they're gonna start supporting the regime, and we're gonna set back the cause of, let's say, freedom or democracy. It didn't happen. It turns out that basically the people in Iran blamed the regime for their own, for the misery that was, that was, um, put upon them. And so I think that 20% will get even smaller as a result, not just of this. It would've gotten smaller anyway. As a result of this, I think it'll get even smaller still because their salvation is not at the end, you know, of a, of a, of a turban or a robe. It basically comes with liberty and freedom that this government, this regime won't give them. And so that is, I think, evident now to the 80% of Iranians, all of whom of that mean that, you know, 80, 80% of the population is born after '79. They don't know the old regime. All they know is this one, and what they know is they don't like it. They don't like living under it, and they want anything other than what this is

Steven Bartlett 1:19:53 You feel differently?

Speaker 1:19:54 I, I think that that's an overly idealistic way of thinking about it. We failed to convert Iraq when we took out Saddam Hussein. We failed to, to, to convert Afghanistan when we took out the Taliban.

Benjamin Radd 1:20:03 Iran is not Iraq and Afghanistan, though. It is not.

Speaker 1:20:06 I'm not saying it's the same. I'm saying that when you, when you change a government from the top down, that doesn't do anything for the people.

Benjamin Radd 1:20:14 No one's changing it. There's no nation-building. We're not going in to do it-

Speaker 1:20:16 Correct

Benjamin Radd 1:20:16 ... we did in Iraq. We're not, we're not crafting their constitution.

Speaker 1:20:18 So what's, so what's gonna build it? So what's gonna build it? What's gonna change it?

Benjamin Radd 1:20:20 The people.

Speaker 1:20:21 The people? The people that have been slaves for basically the last, what, forty, fifty years? The people who have had no education, the people who've been marginalized, you think they're just gonna understand how to-

Benjamin Radd 1:20:29 There's kind of-

Speaker 1:20:30 ... how to organize themselves?

Benjamin Radd 1:20:31 ... incredibly educated-

Steven Bartlett 1:20:32 Mm-hmm

Benjamin Radd 1:20:32 ... very, very highly... I mean, it's, it's one of the most educated populaces in the world, and I have -- and, and they are very -- the, the people that are not regime supporters are very Western thinking. I mean, we see this. We see this in, in the culture they produce, the media they produce, when they go and they speak around the world. So the populace is there. The capability is there. The will is there. All they need is basically not to be, y- you know, not to be facing the barrel of a gun.

Speaker 1:20:55 We are about to find out if that's true. And that is what, that is what we are all riding on right now, is whether this in, this intellectual minority in a poverty-stricken, economically defunct country is gonna even fucking stay there, or whether they're gonna take their brains and their success and their opportunities somewhere else.

Benjamin Radd 1:21:13 The, the diaspora and everything we're hearing says they are, the people are-

Speaker 1:21:16 Everything you're hearing

Benjamin Radd 1:21:17 ... cannot, cannot wait to help rebuild the country.

Speaker 1:21:19 Why do you trust what you're hearing?

Steven Bartlett 1:21:20 Well, his family's there, so he's probably-

Benjamin Radd 1:21:22 I mean-

Steven Bartlett 1:21:23 He, he's probably got better acc-

Speaker 1:21:24 Even worse-

Steven Bartlett 1:21:24 He probably has better access than you or I

Speaker 1:21:24 ... the worst thing you can do is trust

Speaker 1:21:26 the people that you have a personal relationship with. They're the least objective people that you can talk to.

Steven Bartlett 1:21:31 So who-

Benjamin Radd 1:21:31 Who are there eighty percent of the population

Steven Bartlett 1:21:32 ... who do, who do you talk to?

Speaker 1:21:33 Exactly. Who do you trust? You can't trust anything that you're hearing right now. You can't trust anything that you're reading right now.

Steven Bartlett 1:21:39 Okay.

Speaker 1:21:39 The information landscape is too tumultuous.

Steven Bartlett 1:21:42 Well, that's, that-

Benjamin Radd 1:21:42 So who do you trust?

Steven Bartlett 1:21:42 I mean, that's paranoid.

Benjamin Radd 1:21:43 You have to trust somebody, right?

Speaker 1:21:44 It's not paranoid.

Steven Bartlett 1:21:45 That is absolutely-

Speaker 1:21:46 It's healthy

Steven Bartlett 1:21:46 ... d- it is absolutely-

Speaker 1:21:47 It's healthy skepticism

Steven Bartlett 1:21:47 ... paranoid to suggest that everything is misinformation. One would believe, at least I certainly believe, that I have a faculty up here to be able to take information and try and discern what might be informa- d- misinformation and what isn't, and then also be willing to stand corrected. That's a very important part of it. And that goes back to my tribal problem, is once you have a horse in the race and you become convinced, and I am hearing a little convinced-ness from you, that, you know, then I believe you lose your ability to be able to go, "Oh wow, maybe I was wrong. Maybe this..." And again, I'm not condoning what the administration did whatsoever. I'm just listening to Benjamin and saying that is, to my eye, a much better source. I'm a journalist. I'm gonna listen to what people on the ground are saying there, certainly family members, because their opinion is gonna be legitimately, you know, heartfelt and not propaganda-ized.

Speaker 1:22:50 Again, we speak a completely different language. When you talk to me about opinion, heartfelt, and family and belief-

Steven Bartlett 1:22:59 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:22:59 ... none of those are objective. None of those are based on fact.

Benjamin Radd 1:23:01 Well, but rebellions are born on those things-

Steven Bartlett 1:23:03 Yes

Benjamin Radd 1:23:03 ... by the way.

Speaker 1:23:03 I agree.

Benjamin Radd 1:23:04 Yeah.

Speaker 1:23:04 And, and that, that doesn't make it objectively correct. It was a rebellion that ended up in the Iran that we just saw fall apart. That was a revolution. That was a rebellion.

Steven Bartlett 1:23:14 Andrew, where does your skepticism come from? What's it rooted in? Because you did spend almost a decade as an undercover spy for the United States in the CIA. Where, where is the skepticism coming from? Why shouldn't we believe people on the ground who are saying what they're saying?

Speaker 1:23:27 I have seen this stuff firsthand. I've been trained in how this stuff works. I've had to, uh, deploy this in, in pursuit of American goals and ambitions in the past. And, and what you're saying isn't inaccurate as to how people react. People b- we just trust the opinion of the people that we t- we trust the opinion-

Steven Bartlett 1:23:46 Mm

Speaker 1:23:46 ... of the people we trust more than-

Steven Bartlett 1:23:49 Well, you-

Speaker 1:23:49 ... we trust the opinion of others, only because it's our opinion that they're trustworthy at all.

Steven Bartlett 1:23:54 So who do you trust to get your information from?

Speaker 1:23:56 I wanna take my information from as, as far opposite sources as possible, and then see where the information confirms itself, where it correlates. Because if you f- if you see anti-American people saying the same thing as anti-Iranian people, where their messages are the same has corroboration. The number of dead leaders, as an example. There's, that's a corroborative point because you're hearing both the Iranian state media say that and pro-US f- Western forces talk about that.

Benjamin Radd 1:24:24 But what if it's to your point-

Steven Bartlett 1:24:25 Well-

Benjamin Radd 1:24:25 ... a black box and you can't get information from the sources you're used to getting it from?

Speaker 1:24:29 Well, that's, it's, that's exactly right. It is a black box, so if we know it's a black box, we have to question every source that comes out, every piece of information that comes out. What we're seeing a lot of right now with Iran is called circular reporting. It's one single source of information that comes out that gets multiplied over and over again. We're seeing it happen in the White House too, because the White House has kicked out so many journalistic legacy media outlets, so now one story gets multiplied over and over again, and we're seeing stuff that's, that's repeated.

Steven Bartlett 1:24:56 Yeah, but, but you could- I, I have to say something. I am, I am s- a little bit skeptical about what is true. I, I'm, like, the furthest from ever being a conspiracy theorist, but a little bit skeptical of what's true, because I did a post about this subject, and obviously I've spent 15 years in social media, so our whole business was building sc- scaling huge social media audiences. And what I received in my DMs was like I've never seen before. About what? I've heard people talking about bots for decades, and most of the time th- they're actually, they're wrong. It's something else going on with the algorithm or maybe something they don't like they saw, so they call it a bot. I received thousands and thousands and thousands of DMs when I posted about this subject matter, and some of those accounts, when you go on the page and you look at their posting history, their engagement- Mm-hmm ... you look at certain patterns which we've built tools before to kind of, um, spot. Some of these accounts aren't real. And I, I said to my friends, I was like, "What the fuck? I posted about this issue," and then I had thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of these accounts DM me, encouraging m

1:25:54 To post more about certain things. First time in my life ever I go, "Oh, that was definitely..." It was so atypical

Annie Jacobsen 1:26:01 An influence operation.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:02 Just so atypical

Annie Jacobsen 1:26:02 Okay, so what were they, what were these bots pushing you to post on?

Steven Bartlett 1:26:06 I'm conscious whether I should say or not, because I don't wanna infer-

Speaker 1:26:10 By doing so, you're...

Steven Bartlett 1:26:11 I'm, like, inferring that a particular... But I'm just saying I've never felt what I experienced then. And I have, I mean, every, this trailer will come out, we'll see loads of bots, we have systems. But this was in my DMs, it was encouraging someone like me, who has a big platform, to push a certain narrative

Annie Jacobsen 1:26:26 Yes

Steven Bartlett 1:26:26 And the, the, the only reason I noticed is because of the sheer volume, and then the narrative was almost identical. And I think, well, 1,700 different accounts have all, all asking me to do the same thing.

Speaker 1:26:37 So you have final control over the f- the edit of this.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:40 Yeah.

Speaker 1:26:40 So there's no... I- if you don't, if you don't want what you say to get edit- to get sh- to get aired, then it'll get cut.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:45 No, but I'm just saying-

Speaker 1:26:45 But one way or the other

Steven Bartlett 1:26:46 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:26:46 ... whatever you say, like I, I want you to say what you saw, because if the narrative was anti-Iran-

Annie Jacobsen 1:26:51 Mm

Speaker 1:26:52 ... then you were attacked by Western forces

Steven Bartlett 1:26:54 Mm.

Speaker 1:26:54 Western bots attacking a known Westerner.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:56 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:26:57 If you were, if you were propped up by pro-Iranian cyber bots, then now you're talking about a cyber capacity, a cyber capability in Iran that nobody's talking about. So one way or the other, you can see-

Steven Bartlett 1:27:07 Or maybe an ally or someone else or whatever it might be, I don't know. But I just, it made... What it st- my point was that it's made me skeptical about m- my own information chamber. And I'll be honest, before I realized what was going on, very persuasive.

Speaker 1:27:21 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:27:22 Very persuasive.

Annie Jacobsen 1:27:23 You were persuaded by the bots-

Steven Bartlett 1:27:25 Yeah, 'cause, 'cause they're saying nice things to you-

Annie Jacobsen 1:27:26 ... before you realized they were bots

Steven Bartlett 1:27:26 ... and then they're encouraging you to-

Annie Jacobsen 1:27:27 Ah, yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:27:27 ... continue to, to push a certain narrative. And it just took, like, it took me a second to pause and thought, "Actually, maybe wouldn't that be a perfect strategy in these moments to get people who have big platforms to just bomb, bomb their DMs and tell them that, you know, like, 'Why aren't you s- standing up for us, and please use your voice to, um, to speak on this particular issue?'" And I thought, "Actually, maybe I need a, I need my information from somewhere else."

Annie Jacobsen 1:27:50 Well, I think the point that you're making, which is very important, has to do with, you know, memetics or popularity. In other words, what... We don't know the outcome of the situation yet. We don't know if the Hezbollah sleeper cells will be activated. Are they waiting to see whether what they do will be welcomed or will be demonized? And I think that there's an profound influence in social media, and that is true in this administration and, and previous administrations about the rise of pushing public opinion. I mean, that w- uh, to your point, that's what you worked on at the agency, or you at least saw happen.

Speaker 1:28:32 The fact is, I'm, I'm glad that you're seeing it for yourself. You can't trust what you see. First of all, if you're a single language person, you only see what's in your language. You don't see what's in a different language. And then we all have an echo chamber around us, and the, the, the fact that we have so much technology just amplifies our echo chamber, our, our algorithm sees what we see, it sees what we like, it sees what we pause longer on than something else-

Annie Jacobsen 1:28:56 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:28:57 ... and it gives us more of that. And people become very wealthy and very successful understanding h- the behavior that people prefer. And you give people more of what they already prefer, and then it makes them happier, and they don't even realize they're sitting inside of an echo chamber. So for all of these reasons, I don't trust the information I see. I don't trust information unless multiple sources of conflicting values and conflicting priorities and conflicting goals, where they say the same thing, I'll give that more credence. And if you can't get those sources because information-

Steven Bartlett 1:29:25 Then you can't have a con-

Speaker 1:29:26 There's a paucity of information

Steven Bartlett 1:29:26 Then you can't have a conclusion.

Speaker 1:29:28 So you can't-

Steven Bartlett 1:29:28 You can have a living assessment-

Speaker 1:29:29 So do you not-

Steven Bartlett 1:29:30 ... but you can't have a conclusion

Speaker 1:29:30 ... do you not operate if you're a foreign policy decision maker, if you're a president, if you're a national security advisor? You have to give advice and consent. You have to figure out something. You can't say, "I have a lack of evidence, or I have a lack of t- um, opinion or a lack of information, and therefore because I can't corroborate or verify, there's no Venn diagram of, uh, overlapping views," you can't do that. That's when you have, you have to use time as a tool. You have to use time to, to be the tool that you use to collect more information. If you, if you give up time, you give up one of your most important tools, which is what we're giving up with this attack. We're giving up time so that we can potentially just fit a cal- a calendar, January, February, March. Like, that's why, what, what did we actually gain? What, how did the United States actually tangibly benefit from what just happened in Iran?

Steven Bartlett 1:30:19 If in-

Speaker 1:30:19 The United States, how did we?

Steven Bartlett 1:30:21 If in four months from now, before the midterm elections, there is new leadership in Iran-

Speaker 1:30:26 Mm-hmm

Steven Bartlett 1:30:26 ... entirely new, if there is regime change, in other words, if there is, by the president's own metrics, victory-

Speaker 1:30:32 Okay

Steven Bartlett 1:30:33 ... will you change your tune on this? This go of what did we gain? What if it's not evident right now? What if it is in four months?

Speaker 1:30:38 I mean, yeah, I'm, it's a living assessment, so of course. If, for all, for all we know, the president's decision is gonna work out.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:45 Right.

Speaker 1:30:45 But for all we know, it's gonna get worse. For all we know-

Annie Jacobsen 1:30:47 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:30:47 ... it won't be four months, it'll be four years-

Steven Bartlett 1:30:49 Right

Speaker 1:30:49 ... of, m- of, of a-

Steven Bartlett 1:30:51 His-

Speaker 1:30:51 ... of a drought and poverty-stricken and Iranians dying, civilians dying because they can't find food and water.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:55 The '79 revolution took two years to happen, really began late '77, and then you had a sort of reign of terror, almost like the, you know, Thermidorian Robespierre period in early Iranian, uh, in the, uh, early '80s, where it took really four or five years for all the dust to settle. But, but, uh, so the question is, do you want, where are my results, right? It's only been since Friday.

Speaker 1:31:14 No, no, what am I, what, what are we gaining? What do we even think we're gonna gain? What

Speaker 1:31:18 does, what does the United States think it's going to gain from f- from decapitating the Iranian leadership?

Annie Jacobsen 1:31:24 Well, that, that's kind of obvious based on what the president has said. It's that he, he-

Speaker 1:31:27 On what the president has said

Annie Jacobsen 1:31:28 ... I, I'm, I'm just saying based on what the president says. I'm not... But if you ask what the point was, according to the president, 'cause he's the one who authorized the op- operation, it was putting an end to Iran's nuclear program and regime change. I mean, that's-

Speaker 1:31:44 If you base it off of what the president said, the nuclear program was obliterated in June of last year.

Annie Jacobsen 1:31:49 But we have no way of ver-

Steven Bartlett 1:31:49 There was an attempt to reconstitute it

Annie Jacobsen 1:31:51 We have absolutely no way of knowing

Steven Bartlett 1:31:51 They were looking to rebuild these facilities. They have satellite footage of this.

Speaker 1:31:54 Why are you, why are you disregarding-previous narratives to adopt the current narrative.

Andrew Bustamante 1:31:59 Because w- if I've learned nothing from '79 is that the previous narratives were wrong, the assessments were wrong. So I don't trust the assessments either. But there's satellite imagery that shows, oh, there's reconstruction happening at, um, Esfahan or Natanz or wherever. We can see trucks moving. We can see buildings coming up, right?

Annie Jacobsen 1:32:15 They wanted to have a nuclear program.

Speaker 1:32:15 Somebody somewhere chose to share that satellite imagery.

Annie Jacobsen 1:32:19 Well, hang on. It's impossible to say-

Andrew Bustamante 1:32:20 So what am, what am I not seeing?

Annie Jacobsen 1:32:21 It's impossible to, to practically say, "No, no, no, Iran didn't want a nuclear weapon. They just wanted to have electric power. I mean, nuclear power." You know, ph- that's, that's not, that's not really not a plausible assessment.

Speaker 1:32:41 That's what the ODNI put into their f- official report.

Andrew Bustamante 1:32:43 How else do you explain that they're going beyond twenty percent enrichment? Then why are they doing that?

Annie Jacobsen 1:32:46 And w- and-

Andrew Bustamante 1:32:47 They don't need more than twenty percent, so why, so how does-

Annie Jacobsen 1:32:49 And the, and it's a rack-- it was a racket. It is a racket, so.

Andrew Bustamante 1:32:52 And we're talking about Tulsi Gabbard as the head of DNI.

Annie Jacobsen 1:32:54 Yeah. Remind-

Speaker 1:32:54 Which exactly, exactly, which is a great point-

Andrew Bustamante 1:32:56 And because she is a Trump supporter.

Annie Jacobsen 1:32:58 Where is she? She's been silenced. Well, you have not heard from her.

Speaker 1:32:59 Uh, are, are you, are we not-

Andrew Bustamante 1:33:01 Tulsi Gabbard's been a lot of things in her career.

Annie Jacobsen 1:33:03 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Bustamante 1:33:04 Yeah. [chuckles]

Steven Bartlett 1:33:04 But y- do you two think there was any risk of Iran developing ura- uranium to the point that they could use that as a nuclear weapon? Because if you look at the timeline here-

Speaker 1:33:11 Of course

Steven Bartlett 1:33:11 ... um, which I'll throw up on screen, which is just a screenshot. By t- twenty twenty-one, they were at a dangerous threshold. Iran begins enriching uranium to sixty percent purity, which is a short technical step away from the ninety percent needed for a weapon. And by twenty twenty-three to twenty twenty-five, we were told that they were theoretically weeks away from being able to create a weapon, which is when Trump decided to attack. You think that's false?

Speaker 1:33:33 We only know what we're being told, and what we're being told isn't even consistent between what's publicly being released by our own government and what we're being told in mainstream media.

Annie Jacobsen 1:33:42 Yeah, but everybody just looks-

Steven Bartlett 1:33:43 So what do you think is the un-- There's clearly-

Andrew Bustamante 1:33:45 You have an uncertain question.

Annie Jacobsen 1:33:46 Yeah.

Andrew Bustamante 1:33:46 Is it false? Is it, is it false?

Speaker 1:33:48 I don't know. I don't know if it's false.

Annie Jacobsen 1:33:49 Well, just look at North Korea if you wanna know if it's false. I mean, I interviewed Bill Perry, the Secretary of Defense, who went there and got the guarantee and the promise from the Dear Leader there was no chance they were gonna develop a nuclear weapon, fingers crossed behind the back, thermonuclear weapon, and look where we are now. And so I think it would be foolhardy for this administration or any former administration to think that, that Iran wasn't doing the same thing.

Andrew Bustamante 1:34:15 It has every incentive to do it. If I were Iran, I would absolutely d- you know-

Annie Jacobsen 1:34:19 Of, of course

Andrew Bustamante 1:34:19 ... absolutely build one because look what it did for North Korea. It makes you untouchable.

Speaker 1:34:22 We're, we're getting lost in the wrong question. I, I'm not trying to say that Iran wasn't creating nuclear weapons. I'm saying that the official stance of the ODNI was that it was not.

Andrew Bustamante 1:34:32 The official stance they want you to see.

Annie Jacobsen 1:34:34 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Bustamante 1:34:34 To go to, right?

Speaker 1:34:35 Now we're getting, now we're getting [laughs]

Annie Jacobsen 1:34:36 To your point.

Andrew Bustamante 1:34:37 Now it's because you're like, "Yeah." [laughs]

Speaker 1:34:37 Now we're getting closer to the same point.

Andrew Bustamante 1:34:39 Right.

Speaker 1:34:39 Why would the president say something different than what the ODNI is saying to the public? That is a failure in narrative control.

Andrew Bustamante 1:34:46 So-

Speaker 1:34:46 There's an inconsistency there, and that's the question.

Andrew Bustamante 1:34:48 We agree on that.

Annie Jacobsen 1:34:49 We agree.

Andrew Bustamante 1:34:49 We absolutely agree on that, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:34:51 So what do you think is actually going on? I asked you this at the top, but clearly you're pointing at some, some sort of ulterior motive.

Speaker 1:34:57 So I think what's happening here is that we are seeing an administration that doesn't actually know how to govern, and they're, they're trying to find a way to grapple back some sense of success in the face of overwhelming contributing failures, economic failures, al- alliance failures, power struggles all over the world. We are, we are seeing a transition to a strongman, multipolar world when we've only ever lived in a

Speaker 1:35:28 unipolar world.

Steven Bartlett 1:35:28 What's a strongman multipolar world?

Speaker 1:35:30 It's what she was just talking about with Putin and Russia, right? You, when you act in strong authoritarian ways and people respect your authoritarian behaviors by giving you safety and giving you security, then that's strongman diplomacy.

Steven Bartlett 1:35:43 And why does that matter? What happens next?

Speaker 1:35:45 Because that's not cooperative. That creates conflict. That creates more opportunities for conflict, less opportunities for communication, less shared common interest, which is a pathway to more what we call interstate war, which is conflict between states. Because they're not communicating, they're not sharing, and they're not even reliant on each other, therefore it's easier for war to break out.

Annie Jacobsen 1:36:05 I have a sort of pessimistic thought here, which is an alternative to the, what was, you know, what was hap- what is happening in Iran right now, which is what would happen, what could happen, and what might happen in the United States. And to your point that where you said this administration doesn't know how to govern, I would separate from that, whether that's true or not. I would say this administration thinks very futuristically about surveillance systems and systems of control, and you can see that with ICE and with Homeland Security. And my concern would be that rat-- red teaming or round tabling all the different blo- possible blowback. Well, what if we have Hezbollah sleeper cells, you know, set off a dirty bomb in the United States or do something? That, that is, in the eyes of some, a perfect opportunity to create more of a surveillance state in the United States, to use biometric surveillance platforms, ISR, against United States citizens because it's the only way to control people and to, to really know where the bad guys are, and that is a concern of mine.

Andrew Bustamante 1:37:20 So you-

Steven Bartlett 1:37:20 So can you, can you be a bit more ex- explicitly clear there? So you're saying that...

Annie Jacobsen 1:37:24 Well, that you, you, in other words, bio-- Sort of I always just look at things because I consider weapon systems a lot and understand where we have come from. You know, nuclear weapons are the weapons of the past. Um, surveillance systems are the weapons of the present and drones. What's the weapon systems of the future? I mean, you're, there's a serious motivation. You can just look at what happened with Anthropic and OpenAI and the Defense Department the day before all of this went down.

Steven Bartlett 1:37:52 So you're saying they're using this as a way to introduce surveillance mechanisms potentially on United States-

Annie Jacobsen 1:37:58 And I'm, I'm not saying that per se. I'm saying one hypothetical scenario that I can see isRed teaming a bad outcome is not necessarily a bad outcome. Like if there were a problem in the United States as a result of this, we could counter that with legitimate reasons for more surveillance systems. But-

Steven Bartlett 1:38:18 Do you think people sit around and say that kind of thing?

Annie Jacobsen 1:38:20 I know they do.

Steven Bartlett 1:38:21 Really?

Annie Jacobsen 1:38:21 I mean, y- I don't think you can ever forget that the Department of Homeland Security, which by the way, was like the big issue in the United States, uh, you know, just a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 1:38:29 A few weeks ago, yeah.

Annie Jacobsen 1:38:29 ICE, DHS, Department of Homeland Security, for those of the younger generation, did not exist before 9/11. It was an absolute byproduct of America being attacked.

Steven Bartlett 1:38:43 So you're thinking that this I- Iranian situation could give them cover to track and surveil US citizens more. It would create a justification.

Annie Jacobsen 1:38:51 I would change the word from cover to opportunity because I do think that's the way the systems work inside the, you know, executive branch and I think that there is a always an extremely powerful hidden hand that has to do with weapons developers.

Speaker 1:39:13 And this sets us up for a false dichotomy. It's basically you can have security or liberty, you can't have both. So which one do you want?

Steven Bartlett 1:39:22 You're biting your tongue there a little bit.

Speaker 1:39:24 No, he's 100% right. And, and the, the, the consternation that I'm feeling about this whole situation is really tied to the fact that we had a chance to not exacerbate the security situation of our planet by just not attacking Iran. We could have not exacerbated the security conflict for every other country. Only Iran was struggling with their own decision about what they were gonna do with themselves. Now, we have put dozens of countries at risk, active current risk, near term risk. There are people dead today that would not have been dead had we not sent bombs into Iran. There's been property damaged, there are markets damaged, there are life li- like livelihoods are being damaged.

Annie Jacobsen 1:40:07 There are 30,000 dead today who wouldn't have been dead if we'd done this in 1980.

Speaker 1:40:11 You keep... You're never gonna hear me say-

Annie Jacobsen 1:40:12 Yeah

Speaker 1:40:13 ... that I really care that much about an Iranian life compared to an American life. That's just not how I roll. This is my priority.

Annie Jacobsen 1:40:20 I understand.

Speaker 1:40:20 This is my citizenship. This is who I serve.

Annie Jacobsen 1:40:21 I, I don't, I don't begrudge you of that by the way. I, I totally... And it's not that my loyalty is elsewhere, but I'm saying you're now saying there are people that are dead. You're talking about the four Americans or you're talking about, uh, Arab citizens of the various cities that were attacked.

Speaker 1:40:32 Absolutely the four Americans, but also the Arab cities, right?

Annie Jacobsen 1:40:35 Right.

Speaker 1:40:35 And, and if we wanna like the... When we start counting death toll-

Annie Jacobsen 1:40:39 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:40:39 ... we start to lose sight of the fact that we all have to live in a prioritized world. It's like we talk about the 30,000 dead Iranians, we, we haven't said anything about the Palestinians that died in Gaza.

Annie Jacobsen 1:40:49 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:40:49 Right? There's a, a li- a life is a life. Practically speaking, a life is equal, a life is a life. It's a tragedy to lose any human being.

Annie Jacobsen 1:40:55 So we-

Speaker 1:40:56 But you still have to prioritize that on top of another-

Annie Jacobsen 1:40:58 So can we interchange them with the four potential lives that were lost as a result of the Austin shooting that happened yesterday?

Speaker 1:41:05 Sure. A, a, an American life that's lost is an American life that's lost and the priority should be on protecting American life.

Annie Jacobsen 1:41:11 Including protecting Americans from themselves?

Speaker 1:41:13 Absolutely. That's one thing that we're not resourcing right now because our resources are going somewhere else.

Annie Jacobsen 1:41:18 Which is my point about

Annie Jacobsen 1:41:20 I think, you know, the real place to look at this is, is, is surveillance in the United States.

Speaker 1:41:25 Surveillance in the United States is, is 100% a guaranteed future. Mass surveillance has already happened. It will-

Annie Jacobsen 1:41:32 Well, no, I'm, uh-

Speaker 1:41:33 It will just get exacerbated, expanded, and legalized. It's already there. It's just-

Annie Jacobsen 1:41:37 Well, but it's-

Speaker 1:41:37 ... the government has to buy their data from your Apple phone. They can't just pull it on their own.

Steven Bartlett 1:41:42 I think it's probably worth introducing the Anthropic piece here just because some people won't have context. Um, in July 2025, Anthropic, who are a big AI company, one of the biggest in the world, the most exciting in the world, and one of the most advanced in the world, signed a $200 million deal to build AI tools for US national security. Um, in February 2026, which was last month, the Pentagon demanded Anthropic's AI be available for all military purposes, but Anthropic refused to allow autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of American citizens. This dispute started after the US military used Claude, um, in its raid to capture... Claude is a, a tool made by Anthropic, an AI tool made by Anthropic. They used Claude in a raid to capture Venezuelan president Nico- Nicolás Maduro in January, um, which Anthropic said violated its terms of use. The Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to cancel the contract and brand Anthropic a supply chain risk unless it dropped its safety restrictions and stopped telling the US how to use Anthropic's AI, and that started a big conversation which is raising, raging online around mass surveillance, which is one of the things Anthropic said it didn't want America using with its AI.

Annie Jacobsen 1:42:51 I mean, I think it's a convenient narrative to position one giant AI company as somehow moral because it went up against the Defense Department and another one not because it didn't. Because like you said in there, Anthropic was part and parcel to the Maduro raid. So I don't, I don't believe that corporations, certainly AI corporations, you know, are sitting around with a violin for American surveillance. [laughs] I just don't... I mean, Americans sort of general wellbeing, I think that-

Speaker 1:43:22 They're not altruistic.

Annie Jacobsen 1:43:23 No, of course not, and I think that narrative is dangerous.

Steven Bartlett 1:43:26 I-- There was a research piece done by King's College in London where they ran simulations on Cold War-style war games using ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, which are three AI tools.

Annie Jacobsen 1:43:35 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:43:36 Each played the leader of a nuclear-armed superpower and in every single simulation at least one of the AI models escalated the crisis by threatening to use nuclear weapons. Claude, which is owned by Anthropic, recommended nuclear strikes in 64% of games which was the highest rate among all three of those AI models but stopped short of advocating for a full strategic nuclear exchange or nuclear war.

Annie Jacobsen 1:43:59 Bingo.

Speaker 1:43:59 Wasn't, wasn't that the plot of the war movie WarGames in the 1980s?

Annie Jacobsen 1:44:02 Yeah. Yeah. Bingo. I mean, that's Skynet and so these are major concerns. Um, many of our former generals who were heads of, um, you know, cyber and NSA are on the boards of these companies. I've had conversations with a number of them about this. I think smart people areAnd, and, and learned people are on, are aware of, like, this is a absolute cliffhanger precipice.

Andrew Bustamante 1:44:31 Steve, what are you doing?

Steven Bartlett 1:44:33 Uh, just making myself a delicious coffee.

Andrew Bustamante 1:44:35 From the freezer?

Steven Bartlett 1:44:37 From the freezer. Have you not heard about Cometeer?

Andrew Bustamante 1:44:39 No.

Steven Bartlett 1:44:39 Oh my gosh. This is gonna change your life. I invested in this company called Cometeer last year, and they're now one of the sponsors of this podcast because they've taken a pretty revolutionary approach to making coffee. Every coffee is precision brewed at 10 times the strength, and then they flash freeze it with liquid nitrogen to lock in the flavor and freshness, and then it's delivered to you on dry ice in these recyclable aluminum capsules still frozen, like a little ice cube. All you have to do is pop the capsule out, add some hot water, and then you stir it, and you are good to go. You can also make delicious iced coffee drinks as well. Just pour it in, stir it up. And for anyone that hasn't tried it, you can get thirty dollars off your first order of Cometeer coffee if you go to Cometeer.com/stephen. We have finally caved in. So many of you have asked us if we could bundle the conversation cards with The 1% Diary. For those of you that don't know, every single time a guest sits here with me in the chair, they leave a question in the diary of a CEO, and then I ask that question to the next guest. We don't release those questions in any environment other than on these incredible conversation cards. These have become a fantastic tool for people in relationships, people in teams, in big corporations, and also family members to connect with each other. With that, we also have The 1% Diary, which is this incredible tool to change habits in your life. So many of you have asked if it was possible to buy both at the same time, especially people in big companies. So what we've done is we've bundled them together, and you can buy both at the same time. And if you wanna drive connection and instill habit change in your company, head to thediary.com to inquire, and our team will be in touch. What is your most

Steven Bartlett 1:46:26 likely scenario that would lead to a nuclear war? Like, 'cause you, you wrote the book on this stuff. Like, you know, you're, you're, you're the person everybody thinks of when we think about a s- the scenario that nuclear war could break out. Of all the potential routes there, which one do you think is the most likely?

Annie Jacobsen 1:46:42 I do think that North Korea is very dangerous. I think Putin is-- I would've told you five years ago that Putin would, you know, he's an intell-- former intelligence officer. He's familiar with history. He kn- he knows better, and now I would, I have a changed opinion about that. I think it's very dangerous, and I think that he, you know, his use of the Oreshnik was sort of like a, like that, that was a ballistic missile that is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. There wasn't a nuclear warhead in it. He did notify the State Department prior to the launch of that, you know, thirty minutes prior, but that's, like, incredibly dangerous. So everything is dangerous. Any nuclear-armed nation that ha-- you know, threatens nuclear weapons is dangerous, but AI is its own extraordinary level of danger, and the article that you wrote speaks to that. Now, my understanding is currently everybody knows that, you know, air quotes, and then when you learn, when I learned about the Department of War Anthropic AI late at night battle over using AI in these systems, I was, I was surprised.

Steven Bartlett 1:47:52 Why?

Annie Jacobsen 1:47:53 Because I thought there was more restraint on that, and what I see in this administration-

Andrew Bustamante 1:47:58 From the government?

Annie Jacobsen 1:47:59 Yes. And to see sort of the bro-- the same bravado that we do agree on is coming out of this administration about exerting power, about, um, just being able to do a decapitation strike effectively using AI, I, I go, "Wow, that is not what I expected."

Steven Bartlett 1:48:21 The interesting thing with Trump generally is that he has a reputation of saying and doing things that at one point we would've all gone, "Oh my God," but we've almost become so used to these things that there's almost a desensitization to some degree.

Andrew Bustamante 1:48:34 Shattering of norms they call it, right?

Steven Bartlett 1:48:36 Yeah.

Annie Jacobsen 1:48:36 He also contradicts himself. I mean, that's not even a que- I mean, he's spoken on the record about how, uh, uh... I mean, I think he put out a video in 2011, I might be wrong on the date, like attacking Obama for, you know, and saying that he was going to attack Iran.

Andrew Bustamante 1:48:51 Yeah, in 20, in 2013.

Steven Bartlett 1:48:53 What?

Andrew Bustamante 1:48:53 There's, there's a-

Steven Bartlett 1:48:54 What?

Andrew Bustamante 1:48:54 ... there's a tweet that he posted saying-

Annie Jacobsen 1:48:56 So-

Andrew Bustamante 1:48:56 ... attacking Iran is showing that you failed at negotiations and, you know, something to that effect, right?

Annie Jacobsen 1:49:00 So, so here we are talking about how important it is to change your mind, maybe if you're not the pre- maybe not if you're the President of the United States.

Steven Bartlett 1:49:07 I think the slippery slope is, is so gradual that sometimes you don't see where you're, you're heading towards.

Annie Jacobsen 1:49:11 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 1:49:11 And in terms of sort of military action and the use of AI and all these things and autonomous weapons, it would feel like we're going down a slippery slope here-

Annie Jacobsen 1:49:18 Yes

Steven Bartlett 1:49:18 ... in a way that I haven't felt for the other thirty-three years of my life as it relates to geopolitics and war. And also generally, when you think about some of the actions that, and speeches at Davos where the Eur- the US leaders were saying to the Europeans, "Listen, you guys are weak now." And we've... It was, sounded to me saying, like, "You guys are weak. G-get your shit together. Figure out your energy situation. We don't need you anymore. Listen, we're not gonna coo- We're gonna run this now." And this whole idea of special relationship, blah, blah, blah, it seems to have gone out the window. So you've got an emboldened United States military and leadership who seem to be able to do what the fuck they want. "If you don't let us use your AI how we wish, we'll smash your company. We'll take away that two hundred million contract, and we'll cut you off from the rest of the supply chain." And we get used to it. You know, we hear the headline and go, "Oh, that's crazy that..." And then we kinda get desensitized again as humans do. But the direction of travel is something s- sometimes what you wanna look at-

Andrew Bustamante 1:50:04 Mm. Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:50:05 ... versus just this, this sort of static state of where we are.

Annie Jacobsen 1:50:08 That's the concern.

Steven Bartlett 1:50:09 Yeah.

Annie Jacobsen 1:50:09 I think you have hit the nail on the head with that.

Andrew Bustamante 1:50:12 I agree. I think you've got, I think you've got a, a much clearer picture than most, Steve, on what's going on here. The United States, it has to pursue AI far more aggressively than whatWhat the, what the CEOs of these companies want. I actually do believe there's quite a bit of altruism in the CEOs and the founders of these AIs. They didn't create these AIs so they could be warmongers. They created these AIs for some techie, beautiful vision of some utopian future.

Steven Bartlett 1:50:40 That's like saying Zuckerberg didn't create Facebook for, to, to, to cause teens to feel bad about themselves. He created it for a way for people to connect.

Andrew Bustamante 1:50:47 For something else. Exactly.

Steven Bartlett 1:50:47 Right.

Andrew Bustamante 1:50:48 Right?

Speaker 1:50:48 But look what happens.

Steven Bartlett 1:50:49 That's-

Speaker 1:50:49 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:50:49 Yeah. Unintended consequences.

Speaker 1:50:51 Yeah.

Andrew Bustamante 1:50:52 [laughs] So regardless of what the United States' opinion is about AI, it also has to very realistically look at how China is developing AI.

Speaker 1:51:01 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Bustamante 1:51:01 And China is already 10X more aggressive than the United States is.

Steven Bartlett 1:51:04 Agreed.

Andrew Bustamante 1:51:04 And if they crack the code on certain types of AI, like, like, uh, artificial general intelligence or recursive, uh, uh, recursive self-improvement, if it breaks the code on these first, it's an exponential head start over the United States. And all of their AI, everything that we have some sort of reticence about using, automated or, uh, autonomous weapons, mass surveillance, China's already using. So the, the number one strategic priority consistently in all documentation is China, so the United States has to aggressively pursue AI. It-

Speaker 1:51:37 Yes.

Andrew Bustamante 1:51:37 I, I understand that mindset. It is absolutely ludicrous to think that one day an AI helps us take the leader of Venezuela, and then the next day we claim it's a supply chain risk. That's just... That's the kind of lunacy that we live in every day.

Steven Bartlett 1:51:51 Agreed. Yeah, that's a good point.

Andrew Bustamante 1:51:52 But, but the... my, my bottom line concern here is that the United States used to be the leader of the free world. We're not a leader of the world at all. We're adopting more autocratic behaviors because we're seeing other countries succeed with autocratic behaviors, and we're abandoning Europe, which is the only place left trying to say that democracy still counts. Like, we are, we are not leading anymore. We are mimicking, we are reacting, we are petulant, but we are not leading.

Steven Bartlett 1:52:19 I'm still thinking about your doomsday scenario with a deathbed Vladimir Putin and what he might do. Is that, like, realistic?

Andrew Bustamante 1:52:27 Is it realistic? You know, it's like from hell's heart I stab at thee.

Speaker 1:52:30 Mm-hmm. [laughs]

Andrew Bustamante 1:52:30 I mean, it, it, it, it... I don't know what's realistic anymore. I... Again, it's these norms that are shattered, these restraints, these, these guardrails that we think, "No, a leader wouldn't do this," or, "Someone wouldn't do that." I'm beginning to question all of it, too. Um, I don't know anymore what, what someone is or isn't capable of, and I think humans have a discomfort with cognitive dissonance where, you know, holding two opposing viewpoints at once, we've gotten, I think, worse at it, um, evolutionary over, over time, and our politicians are the worst yet, or our world leaders are, are, are the worst at it yet, and so that's a cause of concern for me.

Steven Bartlett 1:53:05 I always think, like, what has someone got to lose and what have they got to gain? And if you've got a couple of days left of your life or a couple of days left in office and you're, I don't know, Trump's gonna be, what, 83 by the time he gets out of office or something.

Andrew Bustamante 1:53:14 Yeah. Why does he care if he pushes a button and does whatever?

Steven Bartlett 1:53:17 At which point, y- y- you know... And the same with Putin. At some point he's gonna be old, and he's gonna have a couple of, you know, couple of weeks left in his life, and he's gonna be reflecting on his legacy, and he's got nothing to lose.

Andrew Bustamante 1:53:28 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:53:28 Trump's got nothing to lose with... There's no second term. Well-

Andrew Bustamante 1:53:31 [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 1:53:34 Well, well, he, he... I watched him the other day taking great admiration to the fact that Zelensky can't be... there can't be elections in Ukraine because there's a war going on, and I think he cracked a joke saying that he would kind of like that, that if there was a US war going on then there wouldn't be elections. And I... It sounded like a joke, but a lot of things have sounded like jokes before-

Andrew Bustamante 1:53:55 [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 1:53:55 ... [laughs] that he said, so. What is your, um... What do you think happens next? And also, I, I wanted to get your take on, you know, uh, we've got this map here which shows where Iran can strike with their missiles. I've got friends in Dubai. Never in my life did I think bombs would be dropping on Dubai or any strikes or drones would be happening in Dubai, and one of my best friends was in a, in the basement in a bunker the other, uh, two nights ago because of what's going on. That whole region has been hit. The Dubai Airport has been hit. Saudi Arabia's been hit, and Bahrain's been hit. What does this do-

Andrew Bustamante 1:54:24 Qatar. Qatar

Steven Bartlett 1:54:24 ... Qatar's been hit. What does this do to the region, and why are Iran hitting these places?

Andrew Bustamante 1:54:30 So this is part of the burden sharing strategy that the United States military doctrine has put, has put in place, and I think to a certain extent, all of the region already knew they were on Iran's radar. They, they've all had this weird hostile collaborative relationship with Iran out of necessity because Iran-

Speaker 1:54:48 [laughs]

Andrew Bustamante 1:54:48 ... is the breadbasket of the Middle East. So they've known that there's always the risk, but I don't think they ever took that, that particular risk seriously and-

Steven Bartlett 1:54:57 Why are Iran, Iran doing it?

Speaker 1:54:58 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:54:59 Why do they care about d- messing up Dubai or making people in Dubai scared?

Andrew Bustamante 1:55:02 They are lowering the pain threshold. The deputy foreign minister said, "We can't strike Americans in America. We can maybe strike Americans at their bases in these Arab states, and we can also strike the states that are, that are hosting Americans, American civilians, American military, American contractors, you name it. They're all complicit."

Steven Bartlett 1:55:21 It's punitive.

Andrew Bustamante 1:55:21 And it's lashing out because what happens is if you make it miserable for everybody, then United States is pressured to bring this to an end.

Steven Bartlett 1:55:29 Okay. So they're gonna continue-

Andrew Bustamante 1:55:30 What does Iran have to lose? To, to back to your sort of doomsday scenario, they're about to be destroyed anyway. What do they have to lose? They're gonna take everyone down with them because only if that threat is real will the United States say, "Okay, you know what? We're gonna pause and see if we can get back to diplomacy."

Steven Bartlett 1:55:44 Okay.

Andrew Bustamante 1:55:44 And it might work.

Speaker 1:55:44 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:55:46 Hmm.

Andrew Bustamante 1:55:46 If the Arab states, you know, decide that, "Okay, we're not gonna sustain this, we're not gonna fight back, we need this to end. United States, you have to stop what you're doing."

Steven Bartlett 1:55:54 So we could see a lot of the conflict actually taking place in some of these nei- neighboring countries, terrorist attacks, et cetera.

Andrew Bustamante 1:55:58 It's working. It's working.

Speaker 1:56:00 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Bustamante 1:56:00 It's causing pain-

Speaker 1:56:01 Yeah

Andrew Bustamante 1:56:02 ... to these sort of peripheral countries that are not central to this conflict.

Steven Bartlett 1:56:05 And one of-

Andrew Bustamante 1:56:06 Look what the United States has done arguably, right?

Steven Bartlett 1:56:08 Yeah. And one of the unintended, well, maybe intended consequences is if I turn on the news in the UK right now, the narrative is that this region, Dubai, all of these places, Abu Dhabi, it's all unsafe.

Speaker 1:56:20 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:56:20 And what that means is they're showing that Sky News are going up to families in Dubai and going, "How are you feeling?" And they're going, "I'm stuck. I just want to get home." And this region have spent a lot of money building their reputation over the last couple of decades.

Andrew Bustamante 1:56:31 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 1:56:32 Their tourist economy. And this is gonna... Even if the, the war was to stop today, there'll be a big cohort of people that choose not to go there on holiday and choose not to go and relocate there, and that will reverberate, um-One could argue that it's actually in, you know, this narrative that the Middle East is unsafe, one could argue that that's actually in the interest of the UK and-

Andrew Bustamante 1:56:53 It's gonna drive down the price of real estate.

Steven Bartlett 1:56:55 Yeah. Yeah, and drive up our tax receipts because we have a lot of-- I think it's the biggest place that UK taxpayers have gone to and millionaires have gone to is this region. So did you have any thoughts on that?

Andrew Bustamante 1:57:06 No, you're not, I don't think you're wrong. I think that there's, uh, whether or not I, I don't believe that Western countries want to see death and destruction in the Middle East.

Steven Bartlett 1:57:16 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Bustamante 1:57:17 I don't believe that. Um, I do think that when they plan for blowback, they account for that, and they try to make the best opportunity out of the blowback that they already expect, and that does make sense. Um, but at the, at the end of the day, Iran has to do something to react, and it knows that it can't just send all of its rockets at the fleet that's off the coast of Oman because the fleet that's off the coast of Oman is gonna be able to intercept most of those rockets. So if they want some kind of effective response, the most effective response they can have is to share the pain and create some sort of international resistance against what the United States

Andrew Bustamante 1:57:52 has done.

Steven Bartlett 1:57:52 How long do you think this goes on for, Andrew, if you had to guess?

Andrew Bustamante 1:57:54 If I had to guess, I would say that there's gonna be an active hot conflict with Iran that lasts a few weeks. Hot conflict meaning every day we wake up and we see new rockets being launched and new, new attacks, new, new air sorties being launched. But, uh, but the actual reverberations of this from Hezbollah, from Hamas, from the Houthis, from whatever loyal stanchions still exist in Iran, we could see that for years. Th-there, there's no guarantee that Iran's gonna bounce back from this in a better place. I hope it will, but hope is not the same thing as reality. Hope is just hope. I hope that it will, but in the vacuum, we could see the biggest adversaries to the United States flood in and support Iran like the biggest adversaries in the world flooded and support Afghanistan. We might see that we have even less influence over the region in the future than we do now.

Steven Bartlett 1:58:43 Is there some, a, an issue of the distraction this is causing to what's going on in Ukraine and in other parts of the world where there was already conflict and there was already turmoil? Like, are people now not gonna pay attention to Ukraine so that, that gives Putin some cover to be more aggressive there and-

Andrew Bustamante 1:58:57 It absolutely, it emboldens every authoritarian ruler out there because now they've, it's been, it's validating to them that they're not actually doing anything wrong. If the president of the United States can do it, then certainly the, Putin can do it, and Xi Jinping can do it, and, and any warlord in Africa can do it. It's, certainly it's allowed.

Steven Bartlett 1:59:14 Or on the flip side-

Andrew Bustamante 1:59:14 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:59:14 ... it's showing that if you act outside of international norms, that the United States president will not hesitate to decapitate your entire leadership, which is something maybe we didn't think was conceivable a couple weeks ago.

Andrew Bustamante 1:59:26 Is it-

Steven Bartlett 1:59:26 So there's that inverse message. Mm-hmm. Is it conceivable that both might occur?

Andrew Bustamante 1:59:29 Yeah. Yes, both can be true.

Steven Bartlett 1:59:30 That's probably-

Andrew Bustamante 1:59:31 Absolutely.

Steven Bartlett 1:59:31 It sounds to me like that might be the most likely outcome, that you're probably gonna go one of either ways. You know, Ch-China might say now's a good time to get Taiwan because, I mean, he, I mean, objectively speaking, people are distracted, and they fight presidents.

Andrew Bustamante 1:59:42 And it's a perfect time. It's a perfect time for someone to try to assassinate the president.

Steven Bartlett 1:59:44 But then Cuba might say, you know, fuck it, we're gonna behave.

Andrew Bustamante 1:59:47 Our president. Exactly, because look what happens if we don't.

Steven Bartlett 1:59:49 What do you think, Annie, on this subject of what happens next and most likely?

Annie Jacobsen 1:59:52 I'm, I mean, I'm-- to that end, I would say how fascinating is it that what happened with Maduro in January still shocks me. A hundred and fifty paramilitary or military and intelligence officers go in, grab the sovereign leader and his wife in a heavily fortified military base, take out his, you know, guardsmen who are actually Cuban. I mean, there's just so many things to unpack in what I just said about what just happened, and yet that's just old news. That, and that to me is more interesting than what might happen in the future, not be- because I'll, um, I can, I can try and wrap my head around the past, but I can't predict the future. But I am, I do believe they, they correlate with one another, and only after time... You know, it's the old hindsight is, is, is 20/20. It will make s- how Iran unfolds, you know, maybe we'll get the band back together in five months and have a discussion and we'll all be wrong. I, I don't know.

Steven Bartlett 2:01:09 Separate question, but do you think Trump's

Steven Bartlett 2:01:11 gonna leave office?

Annie Jacobsen 2:01:14 I mean, the Constitution says he is.

Steven Bartlett 2:01:16 Do you think he will?

Annie Jacobsen 2:01:17 The Constitution says he is.

Steven Bartlett 2:01:19 But do you think he will?

Annie Jacobsen 2:01:20 [laughs] I don't have a crystal ball.

Steven Bartlett 2:01:22 Do you think he'll leave office?

Andrew Bustamante 2:01:23 I do.

Steven Bartlett 2:01:24 Do you think he'll leave office?

Andrew Bustamante 2:01:24 I do.

Steven Bartlett 2:01:25 You do? Okay.

Andrew Bustamante 2:01:25 I have more confidence after last week's, um, learning resources Supreme Court opinion that we saw two justices who Trump appointed who basically defied a policy that was the signature of his, of his second term, you know, his campaign, his, his tariffs, and saying that you don't have that power.

Steven Bartlett 2:01:41 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Bustamante 2:01:42 I was emboldened. I, I would've been more pessimistic, but after seeing that, I, it gave me a little bit more hope that, that, that there is still sort of, uh, guardrails and separation of powers. It's still a thing.

Steven Bartlett 2:01:53 What do you think happens next in the region?

Andrew Bustamante 2:01:55 I'm with Andrew. I think three to four weeks is the timeline I see for the actual kinetic war, and then after that, um, every one of these Iranian leaders, whoever's left, whoever steps in and fills a role of a, whether it's a military junta that takes over, whether it's a symbolic supreme leader, these are all marked men.

Annie Jacobsen 2:02:10 Hmm.

Andrew Bustamante 2:02:10 They're all gonna be targeted for assassination. There is no-

Steven Bartlett 2:02:13 By, by who?

Andrew Bustamante 2:02:14 By Israel, by primary, by pretty much anybody that considers, um, them enemies, e- even maybe now some of the Arab states for that matter. At the end of the day, uh, it doesn't pay to be, uh, a political or religious figure in Iran. So at this point, I think what we're going to see in the months to come is a slow fracturing of that support. And I, it, not surprised if we start seeing defections from the IRGC and people, just like we saw during 1979, saying, "You know what? It's not worth it." There's nothing, there's no, there's no long-term gain here because this relig- regime has lost any credibility domestically. There's none left, zero, and it's losing credibility in the region. It violated an unspoken agreement with its Arab neighbors that they don't directly fight each other in this way, and its allies, so-called allies, have abandoned it.

Annie Jacobsen 2:02:59 It has nothing left. So when you have nothing left, what is there to fight for? That's why, but that's gonna take a few months up to a year to play out.

Steven Bartlett 2:03:07 What is the most important thing that we should have talked about that we didn't talk about, Andrew, as it relates to all of the stuff we've talked about today?

Speaker 2:03:14 I think for me, what I'm always, what I always come back to is what is the future for the average American? What does it look like for us? I'm not sure how this plays out. I, I'm not sure that we improved the state of the average American very much in the last few days. I don't know that we will see much improvement in the next few weeks. I don't know that we will see much improvement in the next few years, um, because of what actions we took in Iran. But I do confirm, I agree with what the other two have said, like the United States administration has shown it's powerful in Venezuela, it's powerful in, uh, in Iran. Cuba's already being more than whispered about as the next, the next transition in government. How, how much chaos are we going to see to the existing world establishment before Trump then leaves office-

Annie Jacobsen 2:04:06 Mm-hmm

Speaker 2:04:06 ... and somebody else has to come in and pick up the mess? And I've always been concerned, not about Donald Trump, but about who comes after Donald Trump.

Steven Bartlett 2:04:14 Why?

Speaker 2:04:14 Because if Donald Trump paves the way for this authoritarian type of shift, and if he has support through his final days in office, then whoever comes next will have even more legitimacy to come in with a strong hand from the beginning, in potentially a world where only authoritarian actions work, and that just continues to take us down a road of pain. I've been talking to you about this for the better part of three years, that I believe the United-- I believe the world, and especially the United States, is, is coming into one of its darkest decades ever. This is the world that we live in now, a world where it's not unipolar, a world of AI technologies we can't predict, of conflict that we can't anticipate, of mass surveillance, of, of the breaking of international norms. This is the world we are coming into now. It's the world that our children are going to be developed in. It's the world that one day they will have to create their own future in, and, and our grandchildren will inherit whatever's left of it after that. It's, it's sad to me to see that this is where we are, and unless we take some sort of responsibility for our own future, we will keep following this authoritarian trend.

Steven Bartlett 2:05:20 But isn't this better than the past?

Speaker 2:05:22 I would say no. A unipolar world where the United States is a supreme power, as an American, that is a better world.

Annie Jacobsen 2:05:29 But at least you won't die of dysentery out in the wilderness, right?

Steven Bartlett 2:05:33 Yeah. I mean, that's kind of what people say, right? They say, "Well, babies aren't dying anymore at, at childbirth," and, you know, peop- less people are struggling with poverty. So, so it's a better... Depends what metric you're measuring, I guess. But on, on that point of the transition after Trump leaves, would it be worse if a weak leader came in? Because I'm, I'm wondering, look, we know Putin's still gonna be there. We know a lot of these other powers are still gonna be there. Biden didn't strike me as the, the scariest guy in the world, the mo- the, the toughest guy in the world. Didn't strike me as the toughest guy in the world. So if another figure like Biden came into power after Trump, once with that war raging over there and with, you know, China, um, thinking about Taiwan, et cetera, is that not even more dangerous?

Speaker 2:06:21 I think there's a difference between a strong leader and a strong arm. A strong leader can chart a path, keep a vision, make hard decisions, balance priorities, keep people focused.

Annie Jacobsen 2:06:31 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:06:31 Where a strong arm is out to win. And Donald Trump, his entire career, he's been the man who's out to win. A- again, I don't think this is a Trump issue. I don't think this is a Trump problem. I don't think Donald Trump is some villain of the world. I just think Donald Trump is the manifestation of how most Americans felt at the time that they elected him, which was like, "We wanna win." And now we're realizing that two years after, the second time that we wanted to win, there are other secondary consequences that we hadn't considered. And that's why so many of the kind of groups that supported Donald Trump have changed flavor about him. It's why his approval rating is so low, because he's found a way to ostracize so many of the groups that used to support him because they didn't realize that he was more complex than what they had originally thought back in that November booth.

Steven Bartlett 2:07:22 Annie, most important thing we should have talked about that didn't?

Annie Jacobsen 2:07:25 I'm gonna pick up on Andrew's c- thought about a strong leader versus a strong arm because it's so important to think about moving forward. And is that even possible, you know? Yes, we absolutely cannot have a weak leader. I mean, look what happened with Putin moving into Ukraine, taking Ukrain- a- attacking Ukraine. And I, I, I think that, you know, who wants to be president? There's also this idea of you, you know, you look at the records of how people say-- come into office, how they, how they campaign, saying what they are, "I'm going to get rid of these dangerous nuclear policies. I'm going..." They have all kinds of optimistic ideas about things, and then something happens in that first briefing, something none of us know. It's so mysterious, and they never talk about. And then p- their policies and their, their perspective deeply changes. And I think people move from an idea that they can be a strong leader to the idea that they have to be a strong arm. And I think that's, that's deeply depressing to me. And I am an eternal optimist, so I wanna see that change.

Steven Bartlett 2:08:34 Presumably, they're being made aware of the real threats that they face, that the US faces, and suddenly what was, I don't know, theoretical becomes very real.

Annie Jacobsen 2:08:45 Perhaps. And so the I who loves narrative, the question is, what is that narrative? And anything that is kept absolutely secret, I wanna know about. And I, I-- no one knows that answer. No president has ever spoken of it

Speaker 2:09:00 So what is that narrative? What are they told? It's definitely not aliens.

Steven Bartlett 2:09:04 [laughs] That's a conversation for another time.

Speaker 2:09:07 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 2:09:08 Benjamin?

Benjamin Radd 2:09:10 Um, here, right here, Taiwan. So I've been working on a simulation, a war game that looks at something that's come up in the news now. What happens if we don't need China to invade Taiwan, we need China to just blockade and completely cut off ninety percent of the chips and microprocessors and, and, um, all the things we need in this AI age into the West. What the hell do we do under that scenario? We don't have the infrastructure, the capacity, the resources to bring everything back online that we need to, to fabricate and make these chips. Um, we talked about China a bit, but I'm really worried about this. What happens here? So-- because we rely so much on that little island, um, and we don't need it invaded, we just need it blockaded. Kind of, so what we see in the Strait of Hormuz happening right now, twenty percent of the world's oil. OPEC can increase production. It'll take a few weeks to bring it offline, stabilize the markets. We don't have that luxury here, not when it comes to the very things that powers the next generation of warfare and diplomacy and economic development.

Steven Bartlett 2:10:10 I don't think the average person realizes how much the West relies on that little island over there.

Benjamin Radd 2:10:14 Ninety percent of our pro-- or at least here in the United States, ninety percent, as I understand it, that comes from, from the, from that one island.

Steven Bartlett 2:10:22 Are the chips that are in all our de- electrical devices.

Benjamin Radd 2:10:24 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 2:10:25 Why don't they just move it over here?

Speaker 2:10:27 They're trying.

Benjamin Radd 2:10:27 They're trying. Not-- They're trying, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2:10:29 It takes years.

Benjamin Radd 2:10:30 Yeah.

Speaker 2:10:30 It takes years to get it cleared. It's very environmentally damaging. The infrastructure takes time. The expertise isn't here. All the IP that's on that island comes from the United States, but the actual factories have been there and will be there.

Steven Bartlett 2:10:42 I guess there'll be a big labor cost impact as well.

Benjamin Radd 2:10:45 Absolutely.

Speaker 2:10:45 Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Radd 2:10:45 Regulations, all kinds of things we have to work our way around and figure out how, and then, you know, s- training the workers to be able to fabricate them, do it as efficiently, yield, um, you know, results that are, that are, uh, high enough.

Steven Bartlett 2:10:58 So that's your concern?

Benjamin Radd 2:11:00 Huge concern. I've, I, I mean, our communications could shut down. Our cars could s- I mean, so many things can go wrong if we lose the capacity to power the devices that we need.

Steven Bartlett 2:11:11 What advice would you guys give? This is my last question, I promise. What advice would you give to the average person? You know, 'cause we've talked theoretically about geopolitics, and, uh, the average person sat at home can't do a lot about that. But-

Speaker 2:11:20 Mm

Steven Bartlett 2:11:20 ... if you were to give advice to the average person who's thinking about their family, about their future, about their work, what would you say?

Speaker 2:11:27 We are not helpless. It's not out of our control. But we do have to assert our control. There is a midterm election that could effectively, quasi-effectively block the decisions that the president can make unilaterally. If, if we exercise our right to vote, we create either a blue Senate or a blue House of Representatives, arguably we have demonstrated our ability to exercise our right to vote and taken back some semblance of control in our country. But unfortunately, I think people don't like waiting. They don't like taking, uh, seven months before they can take an action. They wanna do something right now, and, and we live in a country, in a democratic process, where we get a chance to exercise our power every two years. So we have to actually show up and exercise that power every two years.

Steven Bartlett 2:12:20 What are you doing for you and your family?

Speaker 2:12:22 We're leaving the United States.

Steven Bartlett 2:12:24 Why?

Speaker 2:12:24 Because the United States is not going in the direction that I believe is the most conducive to the kind of citizen that I wanna build in my children. I don't want my children to grow up in a country that is either afraid or angry. I don't want my children to grow up in a country that's constantly compromising its own democratic principles. I don't wanna raise my kids in a country that puts capitalism before all other things. I want my children to grow up as global citizens, to recognize that we're all interconnected, to value every human life. I wasn't given the privilege. I was the perfect candidate to sit here and tell you that American lives are more valuable than everybody else. That's not what I wanna pass to my children.

Steven Bartlett 2:13:02 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:13:02 I want my children to look at lives around the world as valuable, independent, individual blessings, and I can try to teach them that, but that's not the message that they get.

Steven Bartlett 2:13:12 So where are you gonna go?

Speaker 2:13:13 That's for me to know and-

Steven Bartlett 2:13:15 Costa Rica. [laughs]

Speaker 2:13:15 I know this much. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 2:13:17 Okay.

Speaker 2:13:17 I know this much. Absolutely read as much as you can across the broadest spectrum that you can find, and have conversations about what you think you know and what you want to know with as many people as you can across the broadest spectrum you can, and don't be afraid to have a little bit of friction like we had here today.

Steven Bartlett 2:13:43 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:13:43 This-- That, that's the way it works, and that's how the mind stays fluid and flexible, and you can always realize that you're wrong.

Steven Bartlett 2:13:53 Amen. I think that's increasingly important-

Speaker 2:13:54 Mm

Steven Bartlett 2:13:54 ... in an age of, um, misinformation, disinformation, is to be able to have conversations like we had today, where you have an opinion, but you're open-minded to listen. And, um, something that I th- I think is increasingly important but in-increasingly rare, um, even as a podcaster, you're kind of forced to fit somewhere. You're pushed to be on the right or pushed to be on the left or pushed to believe this or pushed to believe that. And it takes, especially in the modern world with algorithms hitting you every day, it takes some restraint and thoughtfulness to try and remain open. Um, so I, I love that message, and I hope for our audience that are listening, I hope that that's what they do as well. Like even if they don't like a guest we have on the show or they have a different of opinion, I hope you can at least bring yourself to listen and fight the, the cognitive dissonance, which is very natural in human instinct-

Benjamin Radd 2:14:35 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 2:14:35 ... to, to hear them out and to allow those ideas to clash with your own to arrive at your own conclusions. Benjamin.

Benjamin Radd 2:14:41 I'm gonna echo a lot of what Annie said. Um, stay curious.

Speaker 2:14:44 Mm.

Benjamin Radd 2:14:44 I think podcasts like yours and I think others do a great job of exposing people to different things they didn't think of. So continue to feed that curiosity. Um, and cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, but it is a good thing 'cause it forces us to think of opinions that we wouldn't otherwise. And I try to teach my students the power of, um, empathy, which basically means you don't have to like the other side, you can hate the other side, but just see the world as they see it for a moment before you do.

Steven Bartlett 2:15:11 Mm-hmm. Mm.

Benjamin Radd 2:15:11 So I think empathy's critical.

Steven Bartlett 2:15:13 Where do we find more of your work, Benjamin, if someone wants to check it out?

Benjamin Radd 2:15:15 Um, I mean, um, for me it's, it's, I'm building out ways for people to find more of it, but, um, on, on socials, on, uh, X and on Instagram I try to post as often as I can and I give talks when I can, so.

Steven Bartlett 2:15:26 You, you haven't written a book yet?

Benjamin Radd 2:15:28 Not yet. I'm, I'm designing a simulation platform. That's sort of my work product-

Steven Bartlett 2:15:31 [laughs]

Benjamin Radd 2:15:31 ... but it's not available to the masses yet.

Steven Bartlett 2:15:34 And Annie?

Speaker 2:15:36 Where books are sold.

Steven Bartlett 2:15:37 I mean, you've got a lot of them.

Speaker 2:15:38 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 2:15:39 But you write fantastic books.

Speaker 2:15:40 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 2:15:40 Um, a-any particular one you would like people to read?

Speaker 2:15:43 Start at the beginning.

Steven Bartlett 2:15:44 Okay. I'm gonna-

Benjamin Radd 2:15:46 The Annie Anthology.

Speaker 2:15:46 Or start at the end.

Benjamin Radd 2:15:47 The Annie Anthology.

Speaker 2:15:48 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 2:15:48 I'll link them all below in the description so people can find them. Um, and Andrew?

Speaker 2:15:52 You can find me at everydayspy.com, the business that I own. You can find me everywhere at, uh, as my name, Andrew Bustamante, and, uh, and yeah.

Steven Bartlett 2:15:59 YouTube, and you've written this great book, Shadow Cell, which has been a smash hit. New York Times bestseller, wasn't it?

Speaker 2:16:05 Yes, sir.

Steven Bartlett 2:16:05 It was. Uh, and this is, I mean, we talked about this in our last episode, but, uh, took a long time to get this book declassified, I believe, and get permission from the CIA to release it, and it's a fascinating story of, um, uncovering a mole within the CIA, which is fascinating. So thank you again, all of you, for getting together and demystifying a lot of this stuff for me. It's helped me to build my own perspective on what's going on in the world, and, um, I, uh, I hope we can have you all back again soon once we s- figure out what actually happens. [laughs] So thank you so much. I appreciate it a lot.

Benjamin Radd 2:16:33 Thank you.

Speaker 2:16:34 Thank you.

Steven Bartlett 2:16:34 Thank you. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior, and the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out. I bet you you might love it