Dominic Cummings — Inside the collapse of western government

1. 0:00 – 8:26

   One day in COVID…

   1. DCDominic Cummings0:00

      So, I have to get all the people back in the same room with the country's most senior official and say, "Who the fuck have we got to fire around here..."

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel0:08

      (laughs)

   3. DCDominic Cummings0:08

      "... to make clear that these people doing testing-"

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel0:12

      Oh.

   5. DCDominic Cummings0:12

      "... don't have to do all of your bullshit HR." You have a person whose time is the single most precious asset, yet they're actually standing with, you know, the ambassador from Tongazonga, whatever-

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel0:24

      (laughs)

   7. DCDominic Cummings0:24

      ... country. The whole Brexit thing was, um, it's such an incredible missed opportunity, because we could leverage off du- winning the referendum, the chaos that that created, the collapse of both the old parties in 2019, one of the parties coming to us begging for us to save them. There's no way that that would happen. There's no way that they would transfer data between A and B about this information and then find out later that that was actually controlled by China. That would be fucking mental.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel0:51

      Okay, today I have the pleasure of speaking with Dominic Cummings, who was the chief advisor to Boris Johnson when he was prime minister, and before that, he masterminded the Brexit campaign. Let's start with talking with your time in Number 10, which is your time as chief advisor. What is the thing, uh, about the government and being in, uh, that- that famous ministry, what is it that most people don't understand?

   9. DCDominic Cummings1:17

      When you go through that door, you're basically going into a sort of, a kind of rabbit warren of old townhouses that have been, um, kind of knocked together behind the scenes.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel1:26

       Yeah.

   11. DCDominic Cummings1:27

       It's nothing like any kind of modern office building. Uh, it's a very, very odd, uh, physical environment, and I think probably you would be struck by, first of all, just the constant string of chaos. I think people, uh, don't really appreciate what it's like being in- in a building like that. Every day, you've got... No, so for example, um, on, uh, in one day on COVID, the day starts off with, uh, "Are we gonna have a lockdown?" Uh, it then proceeds to the Prime Minister's girlfriend going crazy about the m- media. It then involves Trump calling up saying, "We've got to go and bomb all these people in Iraq." It then goes to the deep state coming in saying, "We don't think we should because it's p- we're probably gonna bomb the wrong people." And then other parts of the system come in and say, "No, we should bomb them because we've got to stay friends with America." Then there's some other disaster on the news with, you know, something flooding and it's just constant and... Okay, obviously some days are more crazy than others, but I think it's very h- if it- and if you haven't been in that environment, it's extremely hard to appreciate that, um, you have these f- handful of people trying to come up with the right answers to extremely hard problems with all the weight of the news flooding in on you.

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel2:54

       Yeah.

   13. DCDominic Cummings2:55

       That makes it in- just intrinsically difficult. Then on top of that, you have these, um, just incredibly old centralized bureaucracies actually trying to cope with all of this. Uh, in Number 10, when we arrived, for example, there wasn't even a file sharing system. So, a three-man startup, um, could at least, you know, uh, write a press release on a Google Doc, for example. The British Prime Minister could not, did not have access to such a system.

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel3:21

       W- was it because of security concerns? W- what was the reason?

   15. DCDominic Cummings3:24

       Because a combination of bureaucracy, uh, security concerns, arguments between, um... So it's like, actually, a sort of interesting thing, the Google Docs thing. So, we arrive in summer 2019, there is no system for file sharing. We say, "This is completely insane. We are gonna create a system for file sharing." Uh, months of wrangling ensue. Two different parts of the deep state, uh, basically argue about whether Teams or Google Docs is more susceptible to China and Russia, uh, intercepting. No resolution. This actually ends up affecting COVID. We force a resolution. We get GCHQ to build a system. Still now, four years after we started this discussion, the cabinet office and Number 10 are still fighting about Google Docs versus Teams-

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel4:09

       Yeah.

   17. DCDominic Cummings4:10

       ... and have now recently resolved to, um, hire some consultants for millions of pounds to spend a year doing a study on it.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel4:17

       Yeah.

   19. DCDominic Cummings4:17

       So, um, one very small-

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel4:19

       (laughs)

   21. DCDominic Cummings4:20

       ... little thing in a way, but probably, uh, certainly anybody who's been at a kind of high functioning company-

   22. DPDwarkesh Patel4:25

       Yeah.

   23. DCDominic Cummings4:25

       ... would just be completely stunned by a lot of how, like, the core of, uh, a G7 state actually works.

   24. DPDwarkesh Patel4:32

       Yeah, yeah. Hopefully the consultants are allowed to use Google Docs to decide whether you're allowed to use Google Docs.

   25. DCDominic Cummings4:37

       Quite.

   26. DPDwarkesh Patel4:38

       You go into government, you're- you're, uh... Afterwards you were running your blog, I had these, like, priorities, these main things I wanted to accomplish.

   27. DCDominic Cummings4:44

       Mm-hmm.

   28. DPDwarkesh Patel4:45

       Day to day, you have all these things that are coming up.

   29. DCDominic Cummings4:48

       Yeah.

   30. DPDwarkesh Patel4:48

       Do these things feel like distractions from the thing you went to government to do? Do they all feel important? L- l- I mean, y- you have this big picture idea and all these things are coming up. I mean, wha- what does that feel like?
2. 8:26 – 29:10

   Why is government broken?

   1. DCDominic Cummings8:26

      every other government for the last 20 years, which is chasing bullshit in the media all day, and four years will pass, we won't actually have- have- have done anything."

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel8:36

      Yeah.

   3. DCDominic Cummings8:37

      "And by then, it'll be 14 years of Conservative government. You know, we've just won an election partly by running against the previous decade of the Conservative Party. Can't pull that off again. We're actually gonna have to do a whole bunch of things. And also, that's why the people are here, right? We actually wanna solve these problems." Those issues get to the heart of things, of a l- uh, uh, of a lot of it. You have a f- you have a management question about how you actually manage priorities in such an insane environment.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel9:01

      Yeah.

   5. DCDominic Cummings9:01

      You have a personnel problem about a lack of talent, but you also have this fundamental question of do the key politicians want to spend their time on the important problems or do they want to spend their time running around all day dealing with the media?

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel9:15

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DCDominic Cummings9:15

      And the answer is almost all of them want to do the second.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel9:18

      There's a lot I want to ask about there. I- it's interesting because the way you're describing it, it sounds like it's a company with the Prime Minister's the CEO who's dealing with these- all these operational things that come up. But there is no CEO who's- who has, like, a long-term plan. I'm curious about the media stuff. I want to understand why it's the case that they're so obsessed with the media. Does the media actually matter that much th- uh, to how people perceive the politicians? How is the media interacting with the- the things that are happening in the building so that people are, uh, constantly thinking about the media? Li- wh- wh- why is the media so ever-present, uh, uh, in people's minds here?

   9. DCDominic Cummings9:54

      Just going back to your first point about the kind of CEO analogy, imagine if, um, Steve Jobs or Tim Cook or Patrick Collison or someone, uh, actually spent a large part of their day just doing photo ops-

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel10:06

       Yeah.

   11. DCDominic Cummings10:06

       ... as well. Like, that's actually the reality about- about how a lot of these- these jobs have evolved. So you have a person whose time is the single most precious asset-

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel10:15

       Yeah.

   13. DCDominic Cummings10:16

       ... who, because of the dysfunctional bureaucracy, his decisions or her decisions is the only thing that can actually break down-

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel10:23

       Right.

   15. DCDominic Cummings10:23

       ... the bureaucratic resistance and make sure something happens. Yet they're actually standing with, you know, the ambassador from Tonga, Zonga, whatever country-

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel10:33

       (laughs)

   17. DCDominic Cummings10:33

       ... uh, you know, just doing photo ops-

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel10:37

       Right.

   19. DCDominic Cummings10:37

       ... uh, for a large part of the day-

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel10:38

       Yeah.

   21. DCDominic Cummings10:39

       ... or going to stupid ceremonies or whatever it might be. Uh, so again, I think, so I think that- that analogy also shows-

   22. DPDwarkesh Patel10:45

       Right.

   23. DCDominic Cummings10:45

       ... le- some of the central problems. These people have all grown up in a system where they just don't know any better-

   24. DPDwarkesh Patel10:53

       Mm-hmm.

   25. DCDominic Cummings10:54

       ... than dealing with the media all day.

   26. DPDwarkesh Patel10:56

       Yeah.

   27. DCDominic Cummings10:56

       Now, if you actually understand communication, you know that communication is not the same as answering questions to the media. But that's not what they think and it's not h- it's not the environment in which they operate. And also, it's not the incentives with- i- i- in which they- in which they work. Again, o- one of the funny conversations I had with Boris was I said, "You know, we should say to the ministers that, um, here's your actual priorities as defined by us."

   28. DPDwarkesh Patel11:22

       Mm-hmm.

   29. DCDominic Cummings11:23

       "Whether or not you get promoted and whether or not your career goes well is going to be defined by how well your department actually fulfills-"

   30. DPDwarkesh Patel11:31

       Yeah.
3. 29:10 – 38:27

   Civil service

   1. DCDominic Cummings29:10

      "So, how is it going? You keep- you getting who you want and everything working great?" No. Uh, all the same, all the same shit show. So, I have to get all the people back in the same room with the country's most senior official and say-

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel29:26

      Yeah.

   3. DCDominic Cummings29:26

      ... "Who the fuck have we got on fire around here-"

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel29:27

      (laughs)

   5. DCDominic Cummings29:28

      ... "to make clear that these people doing testing don't have to do all of your bullshit HR?"

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel29:35

      Yeah.

   7. DCDominic Cummings29:36

      Right? You actually have to, like, that's how extreme things have to be in order to act. It was only by doing that a second time and making clear that I would get the PM to actually just start firing senior people in the Cabinet Office, it's only then that the system will kind of part and go, "Okay, this element is allowed to..." But imagine, as soon as that countervailing force is removed-

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel29:59

      Yeah.

   9. DCDominic Cummings29:59

      ... all the normal sea floods back.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel30:02

       So, at some point, we should talk about what it would actually ch- take to change the equilibrium. It might be first useful to talk about how did this come to be? So, presumably, at some point, this is not the way the government functioned. Right? How did it end up... Is it just that the kludge builds up? If it- like, Ive, talk me about the actual mechanism of how, how does it end up this way?

   11. DCDominic Cummings30:21

       Well, so, so in Britain, it, it started in the 1850s when people said-... well, the old aristocratic system based on patronage is irrational. We've got to shift, and we've got to shift towards, um, a much more meritocratic system. We should have, uh, officials that are up- th- th- that, that are appointed on merit.

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel30:45

       Yeah.

   13. DCDominic Cummings30:45

       So, you- but you essentially had a transition from pre-1850s aristocratic system based on patronage, where all kinds of dodgy corruption in various ways and favors done in various ways-

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel31:00

       Yeah.

   15. DCDominic Cummings31:00

       ... but it also moved much faster and in all sorts of ways, much more efficiently, particularly in a crisis.

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel31:06

       Yeah. Yeah.

   17. DCDominic Cummings31:06

       And you shifted towards what you say is like a modern system, where you have a permanent civil service, a- a supposedly meritocratic. However, over time, you see that this supposedly meritocratic system ends up actually just being a closed cast.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel31:21

       Mm-hmm.

   19. DCDominic Cummings31:22

       It's not actually meritocratic. It's a system that promotes practically 100% internally, and is therefore, by definition, closed to approximately 100%-

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel31:33

       Right.

   21. DCDominic Cummings31:33

       ... of the world's most talented people.

   22. DPDwarkesh Patel31:36

       Yeah.

   23. DCDominic Cummings31:37

       Now, that's defended on constitutional grounds now as, "Well, this is the only civilized sensible way in which a state can operate." But of course, it's totally self-serving, and as we saw with COVID, it actually just means massive bureaucracy, uh, very poor people in all kinds of critical positions, and a state that's actually paralyzed when it comes to crunch.

   24. DPDwarkesh Patel31:58

       It's- it's like a Japanese company where you get in at college and just stay until you die.

   25. DCDominic Cummings32:01

       Yeah.

   26. DPDwarkesh Patel32:01

       You know, I mean, I- I live in San Francisco, and if somebody that works in, like, a company for three years or five years, they're, "Oh my gosh, you've been here for a while." You know, you're like a long-term employee. So the idea that you would be at the same place for-

   27. DCDominic Cummings32:14

       40 years.

   28. DPDwarkesh Patel32:15

       Exactly, is- is really odd.

   29. DCDominic Cummings32:17

       And imagine, sorry to interrupt, but i- imagine as well, what the promotion system is like that, right, and who ends up getting to the top of these systems. A lot of people say, "Oh, uh, you're so negative about the civil service. You're all saying that everyone there is rubbish and it's not fair, duh duh duh." That's not my view. In fact, if you look at the civil service, you actually see a lot of very able people, but most of them are young.

   30. DPDwarkesh Patel32:36

       Hmm.
4. 38:27 – 49:35

   Opportunity wasted?

   1. DCDominic Cummings38:27

      to go back to normal. We hate COVID. We hate... You know, we don't want all these arguments about Brexit. We kind of want to go back to normal." And for them, what normal is, is like the '90s, right? The, the, the kind of default mode for how people in politics think about normality is, "Can we go back to that lovely time between the fall of the wall in 1989 and the fall of, um, the fall of the towers?"

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel38:51

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DCDominic Cummings38:51

      Right? That period is what people kind of, like, psychologically gravitate back to. So in Summer 2020 the attitude was... Our attitude was, "Right, now the state needs to be fundamentally re-engineered." But most of the system was, "We're tired, we just want to go back to normal. We want to do what we always do, which is, like, chat with each other, give interviews to the media, and not change much. And given that Starmer is so obviously rubbish on the other side, we don't actually have to change very much either."

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel39:19

      So when I hear this story, I'm thinking... Well, you know, on y- on your blog you've written about all these other reformers throughout history. W- when they were able to make their changes was, you know, like a time of crisis. Lee Kuan Yew after the British leave or Bismarck after Prussia loses the Napoleonic Wars. We, w- you can go down the list, right? The Meiji, uh, reformation or something.

   5. DCDominic Cummings39:39

      Yeah.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel39:40

      And in this case, you have COVID, you have Brexit, you have an 80 seat majority-

   7. DCDominic Cummings39:47

      Yeah.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel39:47

      ... that you engineered based on campaigning on these things. And you have you as chief advisor to the PM, somebody who understands these things, has thought a lot about them, um, and in fact accepted the job on the condition that you would be able to do these things. W- you have all these things come together. Why was the opportunity wasted? And you mentioned, for example, that Boris and Carrie were not interested in changing these things. Presumably they saw that the problem was there. I mean, if you're a PM and you're seeing these changes are... You, you must see the craziness. And also, I mean, wasn't he like a fan of Churchill and he wanted to build a legacy or something? I would think if I was PM, like, most PMs are going to be forgotten, right? You might as well just, like, go for it and try to do something big, t- try to be remembered.

   9. DCDominic Cummings40:35

      Yeah. Yup.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel40:36

       W- why did they waste this opportunity? You know, y- you had all these things that were going for you guys. Or if, if something was gonna happen, that seemed like the perfect moment to make something happen.

   11. DCDominic Cummings40:45

       Part of it goes back to what I said before, that you have, like, two fundamentally different attitudes towards the whole thing. Boris was prepared to be very, uh, uh, very aggressive and revolutionary in vari- i- in various ways in 2019 fundamentally because he thought it was necessary for him to survive as Prime Minister.

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel41:04

       Mm-hmm.

   13. DCDominic Cummings41:06

       Not for the country, which he didn't care about, doesn't care about, but for himself. In January 2020 we were already arguing about, like, what the fundamental direction is that we're gonna go in, as I said before. Like, my view was, "We've won. We won saying we're gonna do all these things. We now have to actually do all of these things." And in order to do all these object level things, that requires facing these very long term, multi-decade long terms-

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel41:34

       Yeah.

   15. DCDominic Cummings41:34

       ... some of them over a century, in terms of how the actual constitutional system works, how the civil service works-

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel41:40

       Yeah.

   17. DCDominic Cummings41:40

       ... and everything else. Versus his view which is, "That all just sounds like a lot of hard work and making a lot of enemies and it doesn't really seem necessary because Labor Party is a joke and I just wanna... I wanna be friends with London, I wanna be friends with insiders. I wanna have a nice time." And the overwhelming majority of people in politics are there but fundamentally prioritize social relations within the insider network.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel42:09

       Mm-hmm.

   19. DCDominic Cummings42:10

       That is the most... That is just what totally dominates their life-

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel42:13

       Yeah.

   21. DCDominic Cummings42:14

       ... day in, day out, year in, year out. Now, in some ways it's very odd, right? 'Cause you'd think, "What's the point of doing this for 30 years-"

   22. DPDwarkesh Patel42:22

       Yeah.

   23. DCDominic Cummings42:22

       "... and then you kind of become a minister but you're not actually in charge for anything and you can't actually do anything? And then you're spat out and you're not even gonna be, most of you, like, not even a footnote in history. What, what on earth is the point of it?"

   24. DPDwarkesh Patel42:35

       Right. Exactly.

   25. DCDominic Cummings42:36

       It kind of seems completely crazy. To me, anyway. I think that, like, misunderstands-... how they see it. For them, the theater and appearing on TV is the critical part of it, right? It's not, "Have you actually done anything?" And s- and the: and the th- the permanent civil servants are brilliant at manipulating the theater to keep the egos of the MPs satisfied. So the most obvious way to think about it, right, is the cabinet. You have the most famous door in the world, Number 10. Every week, these characters walk up the street. The cameras are all there. The cameras whir, they click, they shout out questions. The ministers smile at the cameras, and they think, you know, "We're part of the inside of ga-" This is the, this is the, this is the peak thing that everyone aims at. Whilst behind the door, the people actually running most of the government, uh, regard the cabinet as just kind of bullshit theater. The meetings are literally scripted. Uh, people are given their talk- talking points to read out by the officials. They read them out. They read those out, and the conclusions are all pre-written, right? So the whole thing is a complete kind of Potemkin farce. But from the MPs point of view, "Well, we're on TV. We're treated like we're in charge." Now, the fact that the people actually running the Ministry of Defense is not the Secretary of State, the fact that these ministers have, like, fundamentally no power, the: the fact that in Number 10, officials who are, like, 28 years old, working five meters away from the PM, have f- usually far more power and authority over things than the ministers on TV do, but their names are never in the papers, no one knows who they are. This- th- this weird mismatch, right, is never... It's never explored. It's never covered. I had a funny conversation the other day. I was talking to one of the editors of the, um, one of the biggest newspapers in the country, and I said, you know, "In the old days, people... There used to be a Parliament page in newspapers that would report what happens in Parliament, right? Because that's the center of political activity, and what happens in Parliament is important."

   26. DPDwarkesh Patel44:47

       Yeah.

   27. DCDominic Cummings44:48

       I said, "Why don't you do... Why don't you start a page where you actually report on the deep state?"

   28. DPDwarkesh Patel44:54

       (laughs)

   29. DCDominic Cummings44:54

       And you say, 'Oh, um, the Prime Minister's Secretary for Economic Affairs has moved from this job to that job, and is now being replaced by 31-year-old so-and-so."'

   30. DPDwarkesh Patel45:05

       Yeah.
5. 49:35 – 55:13

   Rishi Sunak and Number 10 vs 11

   1. DCDominic Cummings49:35

      procurement, the planning system, which is one of the major, like, one of the really big things that destroys so much value-

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel49:43

      Yeah.

   3. DCDominic Cummings49:43

      ... uh, and there's just so, such incredible low-hanging fruit.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel49:46

      Yeah.

   5. DCDominic Cummings49:47

      But basically all of that was dismantled by Boris in 2021 after, uh, uh, after we left be- because for, for the reasons I already said. He, he, he came to the conclusion, and most of the party agreed... Like, remember, in 2020 when it came out that we were working on all of this stuff on growth and taxes, um, and the planning system, the Daily Telegraph now s- today screaming about growth was totally hostile. Most of the Tory MPs, totally hostile. Most of the Conservative Party were not agitating for an aggressive pro-growth agenda in 2020.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel50:25

      Yeah.

   7. DCDominic Cummings50:25

      They were actually hostile to it.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel50:27

      Uh, speaking of the Treasury, by the way, uh, you helped, uh, promote Sunak to Chancellor of the Exchequer. Wha- I... He was, uh, from what I understand, relatively unknown before that.

   9. DCDominic Cummings50:38

      Yeah.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel50:38

       What did you notice about him, uh, that made you decide to do that and, uh, th- maybe tell me more about, like, why you think the Treasury is anti-growth as well?

   11. DCDominic Cummings50:47

       So Sunak, um, he's obviously, uh, much brighter than the normal MP.

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel50:53

       Yeah.

   13. DCDominic Cummings50:54

       Uh, he'd actually worked in functional private sector organizations-

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel50:58

       Right.

   15. DCDominic Cummings50:58

       ... before coming into government, unlike most of the MPs. Uh, he was extremely hardworking, uh, unlike most MPs and unlike most ministers.

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel51:08

       Yeah.

   17. DCDominic Cummings51:08

       He actually dug through the detail and, and wanted to understand it and could understand it and did understand it.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel51:15

       Yeah.

   19. DCDominic Cummings51:16

       And he seemed, much more than the normal MP, interested in actually doing, like, useful work rather than running around the media and giving interviews-

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel51:27

       Yeah.

   21. DCDominic Cummings51:27

       ... and all the normal bullshit that they're all obsessed by. So from our point of view, we had a chancellor then at the time who just couldn't do the job at all, couldn't manage the department, uh, um, didn't have the self-confidence to grip the officials in the Treasury. So it seemed just like an obvi- uh, an obvious change. And Sunak d- didn't understand politics very well, d- didn't... Lots of things he didn't understand.

   22. DPDwarkesh Patel51:49

       Yeah.

   23. DCDominic Cummings51:50

       But from our point of view, that didn't really matter because we could do the... We could... We didn't want him to do the politics side of it, o- of things. We wanted someone in there, uh, who also wanted to work with Number 10, right? Which is a criti- which is a critical thing. One of the big structural problems in, in how the British state has worked is that there's a kind of structural conflict between Number 10 and Number 11. You normally have a prime minister in Number 10 that's always wanting to spend money, and then you have a Number 11 which says, "We've got to control Number 10." And, but the Number 11 has in lots of ways much more power over Whitehall than Number 10 does because is- it legally signs off the checks-

   24. DPDwarkesh Patel52:29

       Yeah.

   25. DCDominic Cummings52:29

       ... not Number 10. What we wanted to do was eliminate this friction, and that, that has lots of weird consequences. So one of the of... one of the most stupid things was... is that Number 11, the Treasury basically hides huge amounts of financial information from Number 10, which is obviously completely insane.

   26. DPDwarkesh Patel52:45

       Yeah.

   27. DCDominic Cummings52:45

       Like, how can you have a prime minister making judgments about all sorts of things if his own Treasury is hiding data? Insane, makes no sense whatsoever, but it's completely normal in Britain. We said, "Fuck that, we're going to have one team between Number 10 and Number 11, the data will all be completely transparent." So exactly what the spreadsheets are in the Chancellor's Office are instantly completely accessible and open to the Prime Minister's office. Not something you'd think that ought to be very controversial-

   28. DPDwarkesh Patel53:10

       Yeah.

   29. DCDominic Cummings53:10

       ... uh, right? Highly controversial and unprecedented. Changed literally the, within like three hours of me leaving. Treasury went and stopped it straight away. So our thought was if you're actually going to get to grips with growth and productivity and all these things, you have to bring the Number 10 and 11, and Number 11 systems together. They have to have an integrated diagnosis of what the problems are and an integrated plan for what they're going to do to change it and then actually one team of people.

   30. DPDwarkesh Patel53:36

       Yeah.
6. 55:13 – 1:02:04

   Cyber, nuclear, bio risks

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel55:13

      what are the characteristics needed for a person who can control the government?

   2. DCDominic Cummings55:17

      It's impossible to be a good PM if you accept the way that the job is, like currently works, right? It's totally impossible because, because of what we've been, been talking about. You're just buffeted by media events all day and you don't actually control the government. You can't actually make anything happen. If you accept all the constraints and you accept the way that Whitehall works, it's com- it's impossible for anybody. It doesn't matter. You could, you could put General Groves into that job.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel55:42

      Yeah.

   4. DCDominic Cummings55:43

      If he did it the way that Sunak's doing it, General Groves would fail too.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel55:46

      Yeah.

   6. DCDominic Cummings55:46

      Um, you could put in FDR, you could put in Bismarck. Like the rea- the reality is nobody who actually gets a lot of things done historically operates the way that the current prime minister is forced to operate-

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel56:00

      Right.

   8. DCDominic Cummings56:00

      ... by the prevailing system.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel56:02

      Yeah.

   10. DCDominic Cummings56:02

       The, the, they are fundamentally incompatible things.

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel56:05

       Okay. So if the government is this dysfunctional, I mean, this is the same government that has nukes, that, you know, deals with biosecurity. I mean, all kinds of things that I'm sure I'm not even aware of. Intelligence agencies, counter-terrorism, all this stuff. Do these things really... I mean, a- are the people who are in charge of the nukes as dysfunctional as like not having Google Drive and (laughs) ha- having like two years of litigation to do a two-week project? Or is, is that part also ƒ-

   12. DCDominic Cummings56:35

       In lots of ways, lots of ways it's worse.

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel56:37

       Mm-hmm.

   14. DCDominic Cummings56:37

       So I saw that recently Peter Thiel said something like, um, uh, "We know the DVLA is a disaster." Is it DVLA in America or is that here? The people who do-

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel56:45

       Yeah.

   16. DCDominic Cummings56:45

       ... organize driver's licenses. Uh-

   17. DPDwarkesh Patel56:46

       DMV?

   18. DCDominic Cummings56:47

       "But we don't see much about how the NSA works. And my assumption," said Peter Thiel, "is that in lots of ways the NSA is worse managed than, than the people doing driver's licenses." There is, there is unfortunately a lot of truth to that. But the position is mixed there in the same way that it's mixed generally. So you can't say it's just all a shit show and that people are all rubbish obviously. In the kind of, uh, in the world of intelligence services and special forces and things like that, there are obviously a lot of incredibly able people and incredibly public spirited people, people who make huge sacrifices to, um, uh, believing in what they're doing. But it's also the case that simultaneously a lot of the very worst, most appalling aspects of the bureaucracy happen in that world.

   19. DPDwarkesh Patel57:32

       Mm-hmm.

   20. DCDominic Cummings57:33

       And part of it obviously is that they can classify things and, um, use classification to hide-

   21. DPDwarkesh Patel57:38

       Mm-hmm.

   22. DCDominic Cummings57:39

       ... extraordinary public disasters. So, for example, the situation in terms of China's, um, infiltration of critical infrastructure in Britain, uh, including, um, data systems is much, much worse than practically all MPs have any comprehension of.

   23. DPDwarkesh Patel58:01

       Mm-hmm.

   24. DCDominic Cummings58:01

       But the reality of some of the... I mean, I've been in meetings where these things have been discussed and the PM and now PM, uh, then chancellor have sat literally with their mouths o- uh, wide agog at the extraordinary tales that they've been told. And like, "What the fuck? Uh, how... Are you kidding me?" The number of MPs who know that is probably like a handful at, at most.

   25. DPDwarkesh Patel58:27

       Mm-hmm.

   26. DCDominic Cummings58:27

       And it's almost all completely hidden. Similarly, in the nuclear side, I spent, um, a lot of time in 2020, uh, in bunkers without phones talking to officials about the state of, um, the, uh, of the nuclear enterprise, uh, weapon safety infrastructure. And the truth is there as well, I mean, absolutely horrific. And it's horrific because for year after year and administration after administration, they haven't faced hard problems. They've punted off... So you have a combination of things. You have, um, normal catastrophic procurement, right?

   27. DPDwarkesh Patel59:02

       Right.

   28. DCDominic Cummings59:02

       Which just means it's totally normal for everything to be fucked up. Well, that also applies to the nuclear enterprise. You also then classify a lot of that so that it's hidden. And that means it's even easier for things to keep going for, for longer. It also means that the budget problems are hidden. So a lot of what happens in terms of the, uh, public discussion about MOD budgets and the national accounts in general is massively distorted by the fact that in reality you have literally tens of billions of pounds that are gonna have to be spent on the nuclear, uh, weapons infrastructure that are completely, uh, don't appear in the i- i- i- in the official accounts at all. And simultaneously, you have parts of that infrastructure which are literally rotting. Like parts of it that just don't work properly. Um, appalling safety, uh, that's been neglected for, for y- for, for, for year after year. So that's cyber. There's nuclear. Bio, um, I organized a meeting on, on bio security in, uh, summer 2020 as well. Uh, particularly given obviously at the time there was COVID and we were thinking like, "Is it a lab leak? Is it not?"

   29. DPDwarkesh Patel1:00:15

       Yeah.

   30. DCDominic Cummings1:00:15

       "What's the truth about all of this?" So we organized a meeting. We asked various questions. I didn't say that one of the people that I actually took to the meeting was, uh, themselves a brilliant young scientist who'd been working in the States actually, uh, at the Janelia Lab, uh, for, on neuroscience and whatnot. And so all these people inside the system said, "Don't worry about this, Dominic. They're like, this will never happen. This is impossible. This is science fiction." Or, "This is like 10 years away." Blah, blah, blah, blah.
7. 1:02:04 – 1:23:32

   Intelligence & defense agencies

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:04

      lab leak, and that was COVID, and so maybe there already has been a disaster." But what is, uh, the explanation for-

   2. DCDominic Cummings1:02:08

      Yeah.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:08

      ... why other parts of the system haven't, uh, crumbled in a disastrous way yet?

   4. DCDominic Cummings1:02:12

      You know, if you look, if you look at, uh, just the public record on nuclear stuff, then I think the, the, the only reasonable conclusion is that we got extraordinarily lucky-

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:21

      Mm-hmm.

   6. DCDominic Cummings1:02:21

      ... through the Cold War. Uh, you know? Whether it's the famous, uh, hydrogen bomb falling out of the plane and all of-

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:27

      Yeah.

   8. DCDominic Cummings1:02:27

      ... the safety devices apart from water, I mean, you know, America nearly nuked itself, right?

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:31

      Yeah, right.

   10. DCDominic Cummings1:02:31

       I mean, that was just completely by the grace of God-

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:34

       Yeah.

   12. DCDominic Cummings1:02:34

       ... that that didn't go off. We've been very lucky so far.

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:38

       Yeah.

   14. DCDominic Cummings1:02:38

       And there's no reason to expect that luck to continue, and if you look at what's happening in Ukraine now-

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:44

       Yeah.

   16. DCDominic Cummings1:02:44

       ... uh, then, um, uh, you can see that, uh, large parts of the system are very happy to dance right on the edge of, of the abyss.

   17. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:51

       On the Chinese infrastructure stuff, wha- wha- I don't know if you're gonna say more about that, but I'm very curious.

   18. DCDominic Cummings1:02:56

       If you imagine having, like, a sci-fi novel and you said, like, "What are a whole set of data systems that you really would not want, uh, the British state or the American state to be transferring data about?" And then imagine that it turned out that, um, these things are controlled by, owned by, whatever, uh, Chinese intelligence, then that gives you a kind of nightmare picture that, uh, is actually, is, is, is, is the reality. I can't go into specifics of it-

   19. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:28

       Mm-hmm.

   20. DCDominic Cummings1:03:29

       ... 'cause the specifics of it are, um, are, I think, illegal to discuss. But if you, if you just wrote a story and imagined what are some of the m- most obvious ways in which... Uh, I mean, in fact, you probably wouldn't write such a story 'cause you'd think, "Well, that's just completely implausible. There's no way that that would happen. There's no way that they would transfer data between A and B about this information and then find out later that that was actually controlled by China. That would be fucking mental."

   21. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:57

       How about, uh, the intelligence agencies, MI5, MI6, and in America, CIA? How much situational awareness do they have about the most important things? Honestly, if I was, like, the PM, maybe like on my daily briefing, the top thing I would want is like the training laws on the new- newest AI models or things like that. But on the things that matter, how much situational awareness do the intelligence agencies have?

   22. DCDominic Cummings1:04:19

       That's very, that's a, th- th- that's an interesting example. So I'd say, uh, I think you have to draw a huge contrast between two things, capabilities and analysis, right?

   23. DPDwarkesh Patel1:04:27

       Mm-hmm.

   24. DCDominic Cummings1:04:28

       There are some extraordinary capabilities that the deep state has in the Western world. Um, if you want to, uh, um, dig into, uh, people's phones, uh, if you want to acquire, uh, secret information in various ways, then there are some extraordinary capabilities which people have and, uh, um, and can be aimed. However, in Britain, they are generally aimed not nearly as aggressively as they ought to be. The cr- the p- the process for prioritization of things is extraordinarily awful. Again, another thing that if you actually, like, wrote it out, uh, uh, no MPs really know anything about it, but if you looked at the system, people would just be completely appalled. Also, parenthetically, a lot of that kind of stuff has basically been shifted away from politicians over the last 10 years. So it's almost... Uh, large parts of that system now, nobody really has any visibility on at all. When I dug into these things inside the Cabinet Office, I was essentially like the only political person in a long time-

   25. DPDwarkesh Patel1:05:39

       Mm-hmm.

   26. DCDominic Cummings1:05:39

       ... who'd actually even been discussing it with parts of the system. So the officials themselves said to me. Because it's been pulled into the Cabinet Office, i.e. away from the Ministry of Defense, away from the Foreign Office, and away from the Home Office, the three parts of the system that legally in the past had a lot of oversight over what was happening.

   27. DPDwarkesh Patel1:05:59

       Yeah.

   28. DCDominic Cummings1:05:59

       Now a lot of it happens inside the Cabinet Office where there's essentially zero political oversight of any, uh, uh, uh, of any kind. To a large extent, that's very bad.

   29. DPDwarkesh Patel1:06:08

       Yeah.

   30. DCDominic Cummings1:06:08

       It means that the bureaucracy metastasizes, um, and a lot of decisions are made, um, without any real challenge. So that's bad. But s- going back to the main thing, amazing capabilities in various ways, badly focused, badly prioritized, but the quality of analysis is much, much worse.

Episode duration: 2:35:04