Jacobsen & Bustamante: Why the Iran strike resets the rules

1. 0:00 – 1:40

   Intro

   1. BRBenjamin Radd0:00

      What does the United States think it's going to gain from decapitating the Iranian leadership?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:04

      Well, that, that's kind of obvious based on what the president has said. It's that he, he-

   3. BRBenjamin Radd0:07

      On what the president has said?

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:08

      I'm, I'm, I'm just saying based on what the president says.

   5. BRBenjamin Radd0:10

      You can't trust anything that you're hearing right now. You can't trust anything that you're reading right now.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett0:14

      Okay. Too tumultuous.

   7. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:15

      Well, that's, that-

   8. SBSteven Bartlett0:15

      Who do you trust? You have to trust somebody, right?

   9. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:17

      I mean, that's paranoid. It's not-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett0:17

       Paranoia is healthy

   11. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:18

       ... that is absolutely, it is absolutely paranoid-

   12. SBSteven Bartlett0:20

       It's healthy skepticism

   13. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:20

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

   14. BRBenjamin Radd0:27

       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-

   15. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:34

       But what I would also say-

   16. BRBenjamin Radd0:36

       It had the ability to create their own sort of-

   17. SBSteven Bartlett0:37

       What are you concerned about? And what are the unintended consequences that you're foreseeing?

   18. BRBenjamin Radd0:40

       There is a domino effect that happens with every decision the United States makes. So-

   19. SBSteven Bartlett0:48

       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

2. 1:40 – 8:24

   What Is Really Happening With Iran And Why It’s Bigger Than It Looks

   1. SBSteven Bartlett1:40

      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.

   2. BRBenjamin Radd2:04

      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.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett2:13

      What is the Shah and what is Khomeini?

   4. BRBenjamin Radd2:16

      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.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett3:19

      And how was Iran different when the Shah was in power versus when Khomeini was in power?

   6. BRBenjamin Radd3:23

      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.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett4:47

      And so how did Khomeini take power of Iran?

   8. BRBenjamin Radd4:51

      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.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett6:12

      And the Americans didn't like this.

   10. BRBenjamin Radd6:14

       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.

   11. SPSpeaker7:03

       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.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett7:43

       And that changed at some point.

   13. SPSpeaker7:44

       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.

3. 8:24 – 15:39

   What This War Is Really About And Who Actually Benefits

   1. SBSteven Bartlett8:24

      Annie, what do you think this war is really about?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen8:28

      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.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett9:38

      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.

   4. SPSpeaker9:50

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

   5. SBSteven Bartlett9:58

      Wow

   6. SPSpeaker9:58

      ...with an A.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett9:58

      Okay. There's two.

   8. SPSpeaker9:59

      And but no, that's, that, that is a hundred percent-

   9. AJAnnie Jacobsen10:01

      They're both the supreme leader.

   10. SPSpeaker10:02

       Yes.

   11. AJAnnie Jacobsen10:03

       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.

   12. SPSpeaker10:19

       Guard.

   13. AJAnnie Jacobsen10:19

       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.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett10:56

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

   15. BRBenjamin Radd11:04

       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.

   16. SPSpeaker13:02

       Mm-hmm.

   17. BRBenjamin Radd13:03

       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.

   18. SPSpeaker13:41

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

   19. BRBenjamin Radd13:48

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

   20. SPSpeaker13:55

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

   21. BRBenjamin Radd14:01

       The British lose that power with the fall of, pretty much the fall of the empire in the 1940s-

   22. SPSpeaker14:05

       Yeah

   23. BRBenjamin Radd14:05

       ... after World War II and the United States in '79, exactly.

   24. SPSpeaker14:08

       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-

   25. AJAnnie Jacobsen14:14

       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.

   26. SPSpeaker14:26

       We call it a black box.

   27. AJAnnie Jacobsen14:27

       Yeah.

   28. SPSpeaker14:27

       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.

   29. AJAnnie Jacobsen14:37

       Mm-hmm.

   30. SPSpeaker14:38

       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.
4. 15:39 – 28:48

   Why Attack Iran Now? The Timing That Changes Everything

   1. SPSpeaker15:39

      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-

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen15:57

      Mm-hmm

   3. SPSpeaker15:57

      ... 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-

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen16:40

      Mm-hmm

   5. SPSpeaker16:40

      ... 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.

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen17:20

      I have a little bit of a different take. Shall I?

   7. SPSpeaker17:21

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen17:22

      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

   9. SBSteven Bartlett18:18

      Why, why though? Why, why did he do that?

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen18:20

       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.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett19:08

       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?

   12. ABAndrew Bustamante19:19

       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-

   13. AJAnnie Jacobsen19:47

       Mm

   14. ABAndrew Bustamante19:47

       ... 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.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett20:20

       So what do you think the real motivation there is, therefore is?

   16. ABAndrew Bustamante20:22

       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-

   17. AJAnnie Jacobsen21:12

       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.

   18. ABAndrew Bustamante22:16

       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-

   19. AJAnnie Jacobsen22:40

       Mm

   20. ABAndrew Bustamante22:41

       ... 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-

   21. AJAnnie Jacobsen24:26

       U.S. embassy

   22. ABAndrew Bustamante24:27

       ... U.S. embassy, absolutely. The USS Cole.

   23. AJAnnie Jacobsen24:28

       Mm-hmm.

   24. ABAndrew Bustamante24:29

       All right. So-

   25. BRBenjamin Radd24:30

       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.

   26. SPSpeaker25:07

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

   27. BRBenjamin Radd25:12

       I don't think it was the last best window, but it was a window.

   28. SPSpeaker25:14

       I agree.

   29. BRBenjamin Radd25:14

       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.

   30. SPSpeaker25:43

       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-
5. 28:48 – 32:45

   Was This the Right Moment Or a Dangerous Miscalculation?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett28:48

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

   2. SPSpeaker28:53

      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-

   3. SBSteven Bartlett29:50

      What crisis here at home?

   4. SPSpeaker29:51

      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-

   5. AJAnnie Jacobsen29:58

      I would just say it's tribal warfare here at home. I mean-

   6. SBSteven Bartlett30:00

      Okay

   7. AJAnnie Jacobsen30:00

      ... I watch it and it's just very-

   8. SPSpeaker30:02

      Sure

   9. AJAnnie Jacobsen30:02

      ... very, very dangerous. Keep going.

   10. SPSpeaker30:03

       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.

   11. BRBenjamin Radd30:19

       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?

   12. SPSpeaker30:36

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

   13. BRBenjamin Radd30:40

       Okay.

   14. SPSpeaker30:40

       Conflict inside of a state, a civil war.

   15. BRBenjamin Radd30:42

       Right.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett30:43

       Mm-hmm.

   17. SPSpeaker30:44

       The international community has no responsibility for stepping into a civil war.

   18. BRBenjamin Radd30:47

       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.

   19. SPSpeaker31:45

       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.

   20. BRBenjamin Radd31:54

       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.

   21. SPSpeaker32:05

       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.

   22. BRBenjamin Radd32:13

       So-

   23. SPSpeaker32:13

       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-

   24. BRBenjamin Radd32:29

       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.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett32:44

       Do you think this

6. 32:45 – 34:59

   Is This About Legacy? The Real Political Stakes Behind the Decision

   1. SBSteven Bartlett32:45

      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?

   2. SPSpeaker33:17

      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-

   3. BRBenjamin Radd33:54

      Yeah

   4. SPSpeaker33:54

      ...a public servant.

   5. BRBenjamin Radd33:54

      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.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett34:02

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

   7. BRBenjamin Radd34:06

      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.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett34:49

      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

7. 34:59 – 47:17

   Is the World Order Collapsing? What Replaces It If It Does

   1. SBSteven Bartlett34:59

      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.

   2. BRBenjamin Radd35:13

      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.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett35:28

      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

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen36:40

      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-

   5. BRBenjamin Radd38:18

      What's that?

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen38:19

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

   7. BRBenjamin Radd38:24

      What, what is auth- what are the Title 10 and Title 50?

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen38:26

      Well, Title 10 is the military must follow certain laws of war.

   9. BRBenjamin Radd38:30

      Okay.

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen38:30

       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.

   11. BRBenjamin Radd38:55

       So he's using the military how he wants to use them.

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen38:57

       Yes, and that's-

   13. SPSpeaker38:58

       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-

   14. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:39

       Mm-hmm

   15. SPSpeaker39:39

       ... 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.

   16. BRBenjamin Radd39:53

       Is he the head of the CIA?

   17. SPSpeaker39:53

       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.

   18. AJAnnie Jacobsen40:29

       Well, what I would also say-

   19. BRBenjamin Radd40:29

       Outsource it

   20. AJAnnie Jacobsen40:30

       ... what I would-

   21. SPSpeaker40:30

       They've outsourced it, yeah

   22. AJAnnie Jacobsen40:30

       ... 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-

   23. SPSpeaker40:43

       I'm not saying it was better or worse.

   24. AJAnnie Jacobsen40:44

       Yeah.

   25. SPSpeaker40:45

       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.

   26. AJAnnie Jacobsen40:55

       But, but hang on.

   27. BRBenjamin Radd40:56

       Exactly.

   28. AJAnnie Jacobsen40:57

       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-

   29. SPSpeaker41:06

       Exactly

   30. AJAnnie Jacobsen41:06

       ... strike. So there you go.
8. 47:17 – 57:39

   Which Other Regimes Could Be Next And Why That Matters

   1. SBSteven Bartlett47:17

      who are you concerned about as it relates to other regimes?

   2. SPSpeaker47:19

      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.

   3. BRBenjamin Radd47:59

      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-

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen48:10

      Mm-hmm

   5. BRBenjamin Radd48:10

      ...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.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett48:37

      What's interesting with-

   7. BRBenjamin Radd48:38

      How do you counter that? Yeah.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett48:39

      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-

   9. AJAnnie Jacobsen48:56

      Mm

   10. SBSteven Bartlett48:56

       ...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.

   11. BRBenjamin Radd49:15

       Mm-hmm.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett49:15

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

   13. BRBenjamin Radd49:20

       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."

   14. SPSpeaker49:38

       It's what the d-

   15. AJAnnie Jacobsen49:38

       Yeah

   16. SPSpeaker49:38

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

   17. BRBenjamin Radd49:44

       Hmm.

   18. SPSpeaker49:44

       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-

   19. BRBenjamin Radd50:26

       Right

   20. SPSpeaker50:26

       ... 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.

   21. AJAnnie Jacobsen50:54

       No, but the other argument-

   22. SPSpeaker50:55

       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-

   23. AJAnnie Jacobsen51:11

       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-

   24. SPSpeaker51:24

       Have you been to this part of the world?

   25. AJAnnie Jacobsen51:26

       I, I have not been there, but-

   26. SPSpeaker51:27

       That's what they, that's normal life there.

   27. AJAnnie Jacobsen51:29

       Well, I, I-

   28. SPSpeaker51:30

       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.

   29. BRBenjamin Radd51:39

       Right. But, but so we're selectively choosing?

   30. AJAnnie Jacobsen51:40

       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?
9. 57:39 – 58:48

   Why the U.S. Still Cares About Cuba What Most People Miss

   1. SBSteven Bartlett57:39

      Why does the US care about Cuba? What's the context there? What, what does the US want with Cuba?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen57:44

      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.

   3. BRBenjamin Radd58:04

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

   4. SBSteven Bartlett58:09

      I actually saw this yesterday.

   5. SPSpeaker58:11

      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.

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:28

      Exactly.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett58:28

      So Trump says that-

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:29

      Precisely

   9. SBSteven Bartlett58:30

      ... maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba and he said that two days ago.

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:33

       Mm-hmm.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett58:35

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

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:40

       Yes, they do.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett58:41

       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.

   14. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:47

       Absolutely.

10. 58:48 – 1:05:47

    Do Nuclear Weapons Guarantee Safety Or Invite Bigger Risks?

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:48

       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.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett59:53

       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-

    3. BRBenjamin Radd59:59

       It's, it's the ultimate deterrence.

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:00

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

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:05

       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?

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:15

       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.

    7. BRBenjamin Radd1:00:34

       Oh, the arrival of the Mahdi-

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:36

       Yes. Yes

    9. BRBenjamin Radd1:00:36

       ... and, and, and, and that whole thing, right. Sort of creating the conditions for that to come about.

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:39

        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.

    11. BRBenjamin Radd1:00:51

        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.

    12. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:01:34

        Mm.

    13. BRBenjamin Radd1:01:34

        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.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:59

        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.

    15. SPSpeaker1:02:19

        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.

    16. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:04:20

        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-

    17. SPSpeaker1:04:45

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

    18. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:04:50

        But they're not happy, but they're not happy with that.

    19. SPSpeaker1:04:52

        They weren't happy before.

    20. BRBenjamin Radd1:04:53

        Oh, they've ... But the, the, the statements they've put out are some of the strongest-

    21. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:04:56

        Yes

    22. BRBenjamin Radd1:04:56

        ... that we've seen in years.

    23. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:04:57

        I mean, you've ne- we've never even seen anything like that.

    24. BRBenjamin Radd1:04:59

        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.

    25. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:05:13

        Huge setback.

    26. SPSpeaker1:05:14

        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.

11. 1:05:47 – 1:11:12

    Are We Closer to Nuclear War Than We Think?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:47

       Do you think we're closer to nuclear war now because of this action?

    2. SPSpeaker1:05:50

       100%.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:51

       So you d- you think this has moved us closer to that?

    4. SPSpeaker1:05:53

       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.

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:15

       That, that is not because of the-

    6. SPSpeaker1:06:16

       The more nuclear proliferation, the more risk of nuclear war.

    7. BRBenjamin Radd1:06:18

       That could've been j- that's just as much a plot part of the Ukraine and, and-

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:21

       That has nothing to do with Iran. That has nothing to do with Iran.

    9. BRBenjamin Radd1:06:22

       Why? Yeah. That has nothing to do with Iran.

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:24

        That-

    11. BRBenjamin Radd1:06:24

        It happened two days after Iran.

    12. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:25

        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-

    13. SPSpeaker1:06:35

        Ukraine, yeah

    14. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:35

        ... 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.

    15. SPSpeaker1:06:50

        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.

    16. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:02

        But, but-

    17. SPSpeaker1:07:02

        That's a tactical nuke.

    18. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:04

        But I-

    19. SPSpeaker1:07:04

        That's a battlefield nuke.

    20. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:05

        But what is your point?

    21. SPSpeaker1:07:06

        My point is that we, the deployment of a nuclear weapon-

    22. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:09

        Yeah

    23. SPSpeaker1:07:09

        ... is nuclear war. The deployment of a nuclear weapon.

    24. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:13

        Well, wait.

    25. SPSpeaker1:07:13

        If you're talking about-

    26. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:14

        Hang on

    27. SPSpeaker1:07:15

        ... mutually assured destruction-

    28. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:16

        So are, are you talking about the use of a nuclear weapon, or are you talking about putting a warhead on a aircraft?

    29. SPSpeaker1:07:21

        No, that's, that's been technology for a long time.

    30. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:23

        Right. So-
12. 1:11:12 – 1:12:49

    Military Manpower: Who Actually Has the Advantage?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:12

       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?

    2. BRBenjamin Radd1:11:38

       So we have to separate between the IRGC and the national army. They serve two different functions.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:44

       What are those two things?

    4. BRBenjamin Radd1:11:45

       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.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:10

       Mm-hmm.

    6. BRBenjamin Radd1:12:10

       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.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:27

       Mm-hmm.

    8. BRBenjamin Radd1:12:27

       I'm curious what that would look like if we took out the-

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:12:30

       Mm

    10. BRBenjamin Radd1:12:30

        ... national army and are left with the ideological force.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:33

        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

13. 1:12:49 – 1:14:09

    How Long Can Israel Sustain This Fight And At What Cost?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:49

       can they fight for, and how does that fight-

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:12:51

       Mm

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:51

       ... look over time? 'Cause I know they shot, they shot hundreds and hundreds of ballistic missiles over the weekend.

    4. BRBenjamin Radd1:12:55

       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.

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:13:17

       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.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:29

       Which are the aircrafts, right?

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:13:31

       N- no, they're underground. They actually call them missile cities.

    8. BRBenjamin Radd1:13:34

       The B-2s. Yeah, the B-2s and the bombers.

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:13:34

       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.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:03

        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,

14. 1:14:09 – 1:21:26

    How Does This End? The Scenarios That Could Shape the Future

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:09

       but that doesn't necessarily mean the war is over.

    2. ABAndrew Bustamante1:14:10

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:10

       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?

    4. ABAndrew Bustamante1:14:19

       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.

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:15:03

       Mm-hmm.

    6. ABAndrew Bustamante1:15:04

       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.

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:16:16

       To Andrew's point, Iran can wage a war of attrition. It's harder-

    8. ABAndrew Bustamante1:16:20

       Which means?

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:16:20

       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.

    10. ABAndrew Bustamante1:16:47

        Who leads that?

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:16:48

        The war... It's, it's, it's whatever remnant is left.

    12. ABAndrew Bustamante1:16:51

        It's how Russia has survived so long.

    13. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:16:53

        But-

    14. ABAndrew Bustamante1:16:53

        It's a war of attrition.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:54

        But, but h- like I'm like, who's the lea- do you need a leader?

    16. ABAndrew Bustamante1:16:56

        Yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:56

        Or is it just lots of different pockets of people?

    18. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:16:58

        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-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:43

        Haven't we been here before to some degree?

    20. ABAndrew Bustamante1:17:44

        Too many times.

    21. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:17:45

        Yeah.

    22. ABAndrew Bustamante1:17:45

        Too many times.

    23. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:17:46

        We're always here.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:46

        What is the lesson from history that everyone seems to have forgotten?

    25. ABAndrew Bustamante1:17:49

        That we are shitty learners of history.

    26. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:17:51

        Yeah.

    27. ABAndrew Bustamante1:17:51

        That's, that's what the lesson is.

    28. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:17:52

        [laughs]

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:52

        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-

    30. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:18:05

        Mm
15. 1:21:26 – 1:31:18

    What Sources Can You Trust in a Fog of War?

    1. SPSpeaker1:21:26

       the people that you have a personal relationship with. They're the least objective people that you can talk to.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:31

       So who-

    3. BRBenjamin Radd1:21:31

       Who are there eighty percent of the population

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:32

       ... who do, who do you talk to?

    5. SPSpeaker1:21:33

       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.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:39

       Okay.

    7. SPSpeaker1:21:39

       The information landscape is too tumultuous.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:42

       Well, that's, that-

    9. BRBenjamin Radd1:21:42

       So who do you trust?

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:42

        I mean, that's paranoid.

    11. BRBenjamin Radd1:21:43

        You have to trust somebody, right?

    12. SPSpeaker1:21:44

        It's not paranoid.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:45

        That is absolutely-

    14. SPSpeaker1:21:46

        It's healthy

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:46

        ... d- it is absolutely-

    16. SPSpeaker1:21:47

        It's healthy skepticism

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:47

        ... 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.

    18. SPSpeaker1:22:50

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

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:59

        Mm-hmm

    20. SPSpeaker1:22:59

        ... none of those are objective. None of those are based on fact.

    21. BRBenjamin Radd1:23:01

        Well, but rebellions are born on those things-

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:03

        Yes

    23. BRBenjamin Radd1:23:03

        ... by the way.

    24. SPSpeaker1:23:03

        I agree.

    25. BRBenjamin Radd1:23:04

        Yeah.

    26. SPSpeaker1:23:04

        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.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:14

        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?

    28. SPSpeaker1:23:27

        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-

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:46

        Mm

    30. SPSpeaker1:23:46

        ... of the people we trust more than-
16. 1:31:18 – 1:35:28

    What Does the U.S. Think It Gains From Bombing Iran?

    1. SPSpeaker1:31:18

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

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:31:24

       Well, that, that's kind of obvious based on what the president has said. It's that he, he-

    3. SPSpeaker1:31:27

       On what the president has said

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:31:28

       ... 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-

    5. SPSpeaker1:31:44

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

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:31:49

       But we have no way of ver-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:31:49

       There was an attempt to reconstitute it

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:31:51

       We have absolutely no way of knowing

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:31:51

       They were looking to rebuild these facilities. They have satellite footage of this.

    10. SPSpeaker1:31:54

        Why are you, why are you disregarding-previous narratives to adopt the current narrative.

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante1:31:59

        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?

    12. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:32:15

        They wanted to have a nuclear program.

    13. SPSpeaker1:32:15

        Somebody somewhere chose to share that satellite imagery.

    14. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:32:19

        Well, hang on. It's impossible to say-

    15. ABAndrew Bustamante1:32:20

        So what am, what am I not seeing?

    16. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:32:21

        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.

    17. SPSpeaker1:32:41

        That's what the ODNI put into their f- official report.

    18. ABAndrew Bustamante1:32:43

        How else do you explain that they're going beyond twenty percent enrichment? Then why are they doing that?

    19. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:32:46

        And w- and-

    20. ABAndrew Bustamante1:32:47

        They don't need more than twenty percent, so why, so how does-

    21. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:32:49

        And the, and it's a rack-- it was a racket. It is a racket, so.

    22. ABAndrew Bustamante1:32:52

        And we're talking about Tulsi Gabbard as the head of DNI.

    23. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:32:54

        Yeah. Remind-

    24. SPSpeaker1:32:54

        Which exactly, exactly, which is a great point-

    25. ABAndrew Bustamante1:32:56

        And because she is a Trump supporter.

    26. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:32:58

        Where is she? She's been silenced. Well, you have not heard from her.

    27. SPSpeaker1:32:59

        Uh, are, are you, are we not-

    28. ABAndrew Bustamante1:33:01

        Tulsi Gabbard's been a lot of things in her career.

    29. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:33:03

        Yeah. Yeah.

    30. ABAndrew Bustamante1:33:04

        Yeah. [chuckles]
17. 1:35:28 – 1:41:20

    Are We Entering a Strongman, Multipolar World? What This Means

    1. SPSpeaker1:35:28

       unipolar world.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:28

       What's a strongman multipolar world?

    3. SPSpeaker1:35:30

       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.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:43

       And why does that matter? What happens next?

    5. SPSpeaker1:35:45

       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.

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:36:05

       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.

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante1:37:20

       So you-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:20

       So can you, can you be a bit more ex- explicitly clear there? So you're saying that...

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:37:24

       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.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:52

        So you're saying they're using this as a way to introduce surveillance mechanisms potentially on United States-

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:37:58

        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-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:38:18

        Do you think people sit around and say that kind of thing?

    13. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:38:20

        I know they do.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:38:21

        Really?

    15. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:38:21

        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.

    16. SPSpeaker1:38:29

        A few weeks ago, yeah.

    17. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:38:29

        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.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:38:43

        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.

    19. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:38:51

        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.

    20. SPSpeaker1:39:13

        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?

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:39:22

        You're biting your tongue there a little bit.

    22. SPSpeaker1:39:24

        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.

    23. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:40:07

        There are 30,000 dead today who wouldn't have been dead if we'd done this in 1980.

    24. SPSpeaker1:40:11

        You keep... You're never gonna hear me say-

    25. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:40:12

        Yeah

    26. SPSpeaker1:40:13

        ... 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.

    27. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:40:20

        I understand.

    28. SPSpeaker1:40:20

        This is my citizenship. This is who I serve.

    29. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:40:21

        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.

    30. SPSpeaker1:40:32

        Absolutely the four Americans, but also the Arab cities, right?
18. 1:41:20 – 1:46:26

    The Rise of Mass Surveillance Crisis or Control Strategy?

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:41:20

       I think, you know, the real place to look at this is, is, is surveillance in the United States.

    2. SPSpeaker1:41:25

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

    3. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:41:32

       Well, no, I'm, uh-

    4. SPSpeaker1:41:33

       It will just get exacerbated, expanded, and legalized. It's already there. It's just-

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:41:37

       Well, but it's-

    6. SPSpeaker1:41:37

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

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:41:42

       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.

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:42:51

       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-

    9. SPSpeaker1:43:22

       They're not altruistic.

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:43:23

        No, of course not, and I think that narrative is dangerous.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:26

        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.

    12. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:43:35

        Mm-hmm.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:36

        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.

    14. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:43:59

        Bingo.

    15. SPSpeaker1:43:59

        Wasn't, wasn't that the plot of the war movie WarGames in the 1980s?

    16. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:44:02

        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.

    17. ABAndrew Bustamante1:44:31

        Steve, what are you doing?

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:33

        Uh, just making myself a delicious coffee.

    19. ABAndrew Bustamante1:44:35

        From the freezer?

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:37

        From the freezer. Have you not heard about Cometeer?

    21. ABAndrew Bustamante1:44:39

        No.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:39

        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

19. 1:46:26 – 1:54:29

    The Most Likely Path to Nuclear War And How It Could Happen

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:46:26

       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?

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:46:42

       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.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:47:52

       Why?

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:47:53

       Because I thought there was more restraint on that, and what I see in this administration-

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante1:47:58

       From the government?

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:47:59

       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."

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:48:21

       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.

    8. ABAndrew Bustamante1:48:34

       Shattering of norms they call it, right?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:48:36

       Yeah.

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:48:36

        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.

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante1:48:51

        Yeah, in 20, in 2013.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:48:53

        What?

    13. ABAndrew Bustamante1:48:53

        There's, there's a-

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:48:54

        What?

    15. ABAndrew Bustamante1:48:54

        ... there's a tweet that he posted saying-

    16. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:48:56

        So-

    17. ABAndrew Bustamante1:48:56

        ... attacking Iran is showing that you failed at negotiations and, you know, something to that effect, right?

    18. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:49:00

        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.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:49:07

        I think the slippery slope is, is so gradual that sometimes you don't see where you're, you're heading towards.

    20. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:49:11

        Yes.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:49:11

        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-

    22. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:49:18

        Yes

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:49:18

        ... 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-

    24. ABAndrew Bustamante1:50:04

        Mm. Yeah

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:05

        ... versus just this, this sort of static state of where we are.

    26. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:50:08

        That's the concern.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:09

        Yeah.

    28. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:50:09

        I think you have hit the nail on the head with that.

    29. ABAndrew Bustamante1:50:12

        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.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:40

        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.
20. 1:54:29 – 1:57:52

    Why Is Iran Launching Missiles Everywhere, Strategy or Signal?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:54:30

       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-

    2. SPSpeaker1:54:48

       [laughs]

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:54:48

       ... 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-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:54:57

       Why are Iran, Iran doing it?

    5. SPSpeaker1:54:58

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:54:59

       Why do they care about d- messing up Dubai or making people in Dubai scared?

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante1:55:02

       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."

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:21

       It's punitive.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante1:55:21

       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.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:29

        Okay. So they're gonna continue-

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante1:55:30

        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."

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:44

        Okay.

    13. ABAndrew Bustamante1:55:44

        And it might work.

    14. SPSpeaker1:55:44

        Mm-hmm.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:46

        Hmm.

    16. ABAndrew Bustamante1:55:46

        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."

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:54

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

    18. ABAndrew Bustamante1:55:58

        It's working. It's working.

    19. SPSpeaker1:56:00

        Mm-hmm.

    20. ABAndrew Bustamante1:56:00

        It's causing pain-

    21. SPSpeaker1:56:01

        Yeah

    22. ABAndrew Bustamante1:56:02

        ... to these sort of peripheral countries that are not central to this conflict.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:05

        And one of-

    24. ABAndrew Bustamante1:56:06

        Look what the United States has done arguably, right?

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:08

        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.

    26. SPSpeaker1:56:20

        Mm-hmm.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:20

        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.

    28. ABAndrew Bustamante1:56:31

        Yes.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:32

        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-

    30. ABAndrew Bustamante1:56:53

        It's gonna drive down the price of real estate.
21. 1:57:52 – 2:01:11

    How Long Can This Conflict Drag On?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:57:52

       has done.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:57:52

       How long do you think this goes on for, Andrew, if you had to guess?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:57:54

       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.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:58:43

       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-

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante1:58:57

       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.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:14

       Or on the flip side-

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante1:59:14

       Yeah

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:14

       ... 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.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante1:59:26

       Is it-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:26

        So there's that inverse message. Mm-hmm. Is it conceivable that both might occur?

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante1:59:29

        Yeah. Yes, both can be true.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:30

        That's probably-

    13. ABAndrew Bustamante1:59:31

        Absolutely.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:31

        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.

    15. ABAndrew Bustamante1:59:42

        And it's a perfect time. It's a perfect time for someone to try to assassinate the president.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:44

        But then Cuba might say, you know, fuck it, we're gonna behave.

    17. ABAndrew Bustamante1:59:47

        Our president. Exactly, because look what happens if we don't.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:49

        What do you think, Annie, on this subject of what happens next and most likely?

    19. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:59:52

        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.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:09

        Separate question, but do you think Trump's

22. 2:01:11 – 2:03:13

    Will Trump Leave Office Or Does This Escalate Further?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:11

       gonna leave office?

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:01:14

       I mean, the Constitution says he is.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:16

       Do you think he will?

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:01:17

       The Constitution says he is.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:19

       But do you think he will?

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:01:20

       [laughs] I don't have a crystal ball.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:22

       Do you think he'll leave office?

    8. ABAndrew Bustamante2:01:23

       I do.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:24

       Do you think he'll leave office?

    10. ABAndrew Bustamante2:01:24

        I do.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:25

        You do? Okay.

    12. ABAndrew Bustamante2:01:25

        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.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:41

        Mm-hmm.

    14. ABAndrew Bustamante2:01:42

        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.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:53

        What do you think happens next in the region?

    16. ABAndrew Bustamante2:01:55

        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.

    17. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:02:10

        Hmm.

    18. ABAndrew Bustamante2:02:10

        They're all gonna be targeted for assassination. There is no-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett2:02:13

        By, by who?

    20. ABAndrew Bustamante2:02:14

        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.

    21. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:02:59

        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.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett2:03:07

        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?

23. 2:03:13 – 2:16:51

    What the Future Looks Like for the Average American If This Continues

    1. SPSpeaker2:03:14

       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-

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:04:06

       Mm-hmm

    3. SPSpeaker2:04:06

       ... 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.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett2:04:14

       Why?

    5. SPSpeaker2:04:14

       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.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett2:05:20

       But isn't this better than the past?

    7. SPSpeaker2:05:22

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

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:05:29

       But at least you won't die of dysentery out in the wilderness, right?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett2:05:33

       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?

    10. SPSpeaker2:06:21

        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.

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:06:31

        Mm-hmm.

    12. SPSpeaker2:06:31

        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.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett2:07:22

        Annie, most important thing we should have talked about that didn't?

    14. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:07:25

        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.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett2:08:34

        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.

    16. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:08:45

        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

    17. SPSpeaker2:09:00

        So what is that narrative? What are they told? It's definitely not aliens.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett2:09:04

        [laughs] That's a conversation for another time.

    19. SPSpeaker2:09:07

        Mm.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett2:09:08

        Benjamin?

    21. BRBenjamin Radd2:09:10

        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.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett2:10:10

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

    23. BRBenjamin Radd2:10:14

        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.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett2:10:22

        Are the chips that are in all our de- electrical devices.

    25. BRBenjamin Radd2:10:24

        Mm-hmm.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett2:10:25

        Why don't they just move it over here?

    27. SPSpeaker2:10:27

        They're trying.

    28. BRBenjamin Radd2:10:27

        They're trying. Not-- They're trying, right? Yeah.

    29. SPSpeaker2:10:29

        It takes years.

    30. BRBenjamin Radd2:10:30

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:16:51