Eddie Fishman: What is Actually Happening in Iran?

Eddie Fishman 0:00 [upbeat music] This is one of the, I think, honestly tragic lessons of recent history is, you know, the countries that have given up nuclear weapons or that have developed some parts of a nuclear program but then didn't cross the threshold have actually fared a lot worse than the countries that have developed nuclear weapons. Right? I mean, this is-

Trevor Noah 0:20 Damn, Eddie

Eddie Fishman 0:21 It's bad

Trevor Noah 0:21 That's a crazy paradox when you think about it.

Eugene 0:23 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 0:24 Yeah. I think there's an incentive. I mean, if you look at Gaddafi, right? I mean, the, the Libyans-

Trevor Noah 0:27 That's a crazy paradox when you think about it

Eugene 0:29 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 0:29 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 0:30 Everyone who didn't get a nuke

Eugene 0:31 Look what happened to them.

Trevor Noah 0:32 Look what happened. But you don't want them to get a nuke, but if you don't get a nuke-

Eugene 0:35 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 0:37 You might wanna get a nuke, Eugene. It-

Eddie Fishman 0:40 Just go on LinkedIn, man. [laughs]

Eugene 0:42 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 0:42 [laughs] [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 0:48 This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. [upbeat music]

Eddie Fishman 1:02 A little bit. Um, like, you know, g- go shopping for my kids.

Trevor Noah 1:08 You go shopping for your kids?

Eddie Fishman 1:09 In Soho, yeah. My wife has, like, this... There's this, like, kids store there that we like, we walk to.

Trevor Noah 1:13 You g- you guys go together?

Eddie Fishman 1:14 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:15 Your children believe in ch- in closed democracy.

Eddie Fishman 1:17 [laughs] My, my, my wife likes to dress my, my kids in fashionable New York clothes, so we go to a place in Soho.

Trevor Noah 1:25 Wait, it's called the-

Eddie Fishman 1:25 I think it's called the Makie. M-A-K-I-E.

Trevor Noah 1:29 And your kids choose what they like?

Eddie Fishman 1:30 No, no, no, no, no.

Trevor Noah 1:31 Oh, the daugh- [laughs] That's what-

Eddie Fishman 1:32 They don't, they don't get to choose

Trevor Noah 1:33 ... that's what I meant. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:34 [laughs] There's no choice.

Trevor Noah 1:35 Oh, so they don't get to choose?

Eddie Fishman 1:35 Yeah.

Eugene 1:36 Right.

Eddie Fishman 1:36 But it's hilarious, though. My, my kids look, like, very hip, like, you know, Manhattan. Two, a two-year- and four-year-old.

Trevor Noah 1:42 That's so cool.

Eddie Fishman 1:42 My wife is really into that.

Trevor Noah 1:44 She likes dressing them up like, yeah, nah.

Eddie Fishman 1:46 I guess, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:48 You know when-

Eddie Fishman 1:48 It's interesting

Trevor Noah 1:49 ... when, when wives dress kids up, you're off the hook.

Eddie Fishman 1:53 That's true, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:53 'Cause she doesn't touch your fashion anymore.

Eddie Fishman 1:55 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:55 'Cause it's too much paperwork now. 'Cause she has to worry about herself first-

Eddie Fishman 1:59 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:59 ... and then the kids.

Eddie Fishman 2:00 That's actually a good point.

Trevor Noah 2:01 Because now you stop being a representation of her. Remember, before you were a proxy. If she was dressed nicely and then you're not, then she's like, "Come on, this guy is making me look bad." Then she would focus on dressing you up. Now she's got two kids.

Eddie Fishman 2:14 Mm-hmm. Here's the thing, though. I, that's true, but I have noticed, though, since we've had kids, I just don't get any new clothes anymore.

Trevor Noah 2:21 Ah, I told you.

Eddie Fishman 2:22 Yeah, so I, I-

Trevor Noah 2:23 She doesn't care about you anymore

Eddie Fishman 2:23 ... I, like, all my clothes are, like, from, like, fi- like-

Trevor Noah 2:25 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 2:26 ... just, like, this, this blazer I got when I was, like, 25, and I've definitely gained, like, a solid 15 pounds, so, you know. What can you do?

Trevor Noah 2:31 But before she would've been like, "If you allow Eugene, he'll end your marriage. Careful."

Eddie Fishman 2:35 [laughs]

Eugene 2:35 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 2:35 "Eugene will expose things that you never wanted to know."

Eddie Fishman 2:37 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 2:38 She doesn't care. "Honey, how was the podcast?"

Eugene 2:40 Nobody cares about you. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 2:41 "I learned everything. I now know the truth."

Eddie Fishman 2:44 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:44 "You don't care about me anymore."

Eugene 2:45 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 2:46 Yeah. I was wondering. I was like, "Where are my, my new clothes?"

Eugene 2:49 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 2:49 And now it's over. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 2:51 It's-

Trevor Noah 2:51 Over.

Eddie Fishman 2:52 Yeah.

Eugene 2:52 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 2:52 The one thing she d- has gotten me are these really nice socks that are super comfy that I've, like... 'Cause I've had to dress up more for all of these book c- talks and stuff like that.

Trevor Noah 3:00 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eddie Fishman 3:00 And, um, there's, like, a hole in one of them, and I was like, "Can I have a new one?" 'Cause I loved it so much. And she was like, "Yeah," but it's, like, two months ago, I still haven't gotten it. And I was like, "What's going on?" She's like, "Well, Father's Day." She's waiting to give it to me.

Trevor Noah 3:11 No.

Eugene 3:11 That's amazing.

Eddie Fishman 3:11 I was like, "I need it now." Like, you know, "I need the sock."

Eugene 3:13 That's amazing.

Eddie Fishman 3:14 "I need the sock."

Trevor Noah 3:15 You know what she should do? She should give you the new socks now, and then, but cut out the part that has the hole, then fill the, give you the hole filling part on Father's Day.

Eddie Fishman 3:23 [laughs]

Eugene 3:23 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 3:23 Then you get new socks now-

Eddie Fishman 3:25 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 3:25 ... but the part you need to be filled on Father's Day.

Eddie Fishman 3:28 [laughs]

Eugene 3:28 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 3:28 Why are you like that? [laughs]

Trevor Noah 3:30 [laughs]

Eugene 3:30 I thought I was the problem here. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 3:31 No, then you get, like, an upgrade.

Trevor Noah 3:33 You can ... Oh, we're recording. We all good?

Eddie Fishman 3:34 [laughs]

Eugene 3:35 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 3:35 All right. Let's do it. Eddie Fishman, welcome.

Eddie Fishman 3:38 Good to see you.

Trevor Noah 3:39 Welcome to the podcast.

Eugene 3:40 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 3:40 And welcome at the best possible time to have you on, because I've asked around, and there are a few names that come up more when you, when you request the services of somebody who is adept at understanding statecraft, I believe it's called.

Eddie Fishman 3:56 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 3:56 Uh, sanctions, uh, b- borders, geopolitical, uh, skirmishes. You worked for the State Department, that's correct?

Eddie Fishman 4:05 That's right, yeah.

Trevor Noah 4:06 Right? Uh, you were instrumental in, like, I guess, like, guiding some of the policy around, like, ch- like, the, the US's sanctions between China and Russia. So I mean, I'm, I'm sitting next to the perfect person to ask, and because I don't, like ... Not that I don't trust the internet anymore. I just don't know what to search for these days. It's easier for me to ask an actual expert in person.

Eugene 4:26 I thought you were gonna say 'cause the internet searches for you instead.

Trevor Noah 4:29 No, it d-

Eddie Fishman 4:29 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 4:29 No, I don't know what to search for these days.

Eugene 4:31 'Cause you think of a dog, next thing you see dog

Eugene 4:33 ads.

Trevor Noah 4:33 You're not wrong.

Eugene 4:34 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 4:34 You're not wrong. But everyone has the same question, so I'm gonna ask it on behalf of many of us. W- what is actually happening in Iran?

Eddie Fishman 4:46 Yeah. It's a great question.

Trevor Noah 4:47 Yes.

Eddie Fishman 4:48 Um, look, uh, I started my career motivated by trying to come up with a solution to Iran's nuclear program that didn't involve fighting another war in the Middle East. Um, that's why I, I honestly joined the government after I graduated college. Uh, Iran was building a nuclear program. The US was fighting a war in Afghanistan, another one in Iraq, and both of them were going terribly.

Trevor Noah 5:09 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 5:09 And I thought to myself, there has to be a better way to try to non-violently coerce countries that are trying to do things that we don't want them to do.

Trevor Noah 5:17 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 5:17 Like seek nuclear weapons or support terrorist groups, to stop them from doing that. And that had been the US policy for a long time, right? That's what George W. Bush wanted to do in his second term. It's what Barack Obama did, and famously, uh, with the Iran nuclear deal. Look, I think Donald Trump in 2018, during his first term, he made a gamble. He's, he, he said, "If only we'd imposed more sanctions on Iran, if we imp- put them in more economic pain-

Trevor Noah 5:41 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 5:41 ... I could get a deal that was even better than what Obama did."

Trevor Noah 5:44 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 5:44 Right? And he tried that through this so-called maximum pressure strategy, and it failed. You know, by the time he came back, uh, in his second term, so, you know, last year, Iran had enough nuclear material to build 10 bombs, which is way more than they ever had, you know, before, uh, you know, before we actually had that deal in 2015. And so I think Trump Was sort of confronting with this, confront- confronting this massive failure, which was he had tried maximum pressure to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. It hadn't worked, and so he could have theoretically tried a different approach, maybe pivoted to something more like what Obama did with diplomacy.

Trevor Noah 6:17 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 6:18 But instead of changing his goals, he changed his means. He escalated from the use of economic warfare through sanctions and economic pressure to the use of military force, and I think, uh, we're now seeing why every president before him had been hesitant to attack Iran.

Trevor Noah 6:34 So, so here's, here's what I hope we get to, um, in this conversation. I, I, I think, one, I'd love us to all be able to actually understand what's going on, not on the ground, but, like, you know, behind closed doors with Iran and the US.

Eddie Fishman 6:48 Sure.

Trevor Noah 6:49 Uh, two, I would love for us to all understand why you, I guess, sort of shouldn't mess with Iran lightly, right?

Eddie Fishman 6:57 Mm.

Trevor Noah 6:57 Uh, three, I would like us to even understand who sets the rules around who should and shouldn't have things, whether it's nuclear weapons, or who decides where borders should or shouldn't be enforced, or how you get to enforce that, um, what attack is, what defense is, and then understanding where America exists in the world now as it pertains to China and Russia, who seem like the other major state players. So let's, let's work from where we are now, right? E- everything you laid out makes sense to me, but I'm just gonna ask, like, the, the, the dumb question that, that lingers in my head, and that is why is America so opposed to Iran building up ur- enriched ur- uranium? And, and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll say the ... I'll ask the full question.

Eddie Fishman 7:41 Sure.

Trevor Noah 7:42 Why is

Trevor Noah 7:43 America so opposed to it when Iran has constantly said, "We're not trying to make a nuclear weapon."

Eddie Fishman 7:48 Sure.

Trevor Noah 7:48 "We just want enriched uranium because we have many other uses for it. We can use it for power plants. We can use it, you know, for our energy needs as other countries have." So explain, explain that part to me.

Eddie Fishman 7:58 Sure. So look, there is this thing called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. I think it was first agreed to in the 1960s, and basically it, it regulates which countries can and can't have certain nuclear material.

Trevor Noah 8:10 Okay.

Eddie Fishman 8:10 And basically, the bargain is there, there are a few countries that legally can have nuclear weapons, right? The United States, China, Russia, the UK, and France.

Trevor Noah 8:17 Why?

Eddie Fishman 8:18 It's, you know, basically who was the most powerful countries after World War II and were able to sort of make themselves permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Trevor Noah 8:25 That's a great gig.

Eddie Fishman 8:26 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 8:26 We should decide, Eugene, who between us gets to own a gun. I'm gonna vote for me. [laughs]

Eugene 8:31 I was gonna go more for Africom. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 8:33 [laughs]

Eugene 8:34 You know that. We got to Canada.

Trevor Noah 8:36 Ooh, man.

Eddie Fishman 8:38 But look, I mean-

Eugene 8:38 Make it non-proliferate

Eddie Fishman 8:39 ... yeah, I mean, I do, I do think there's something, you know, there, which is, you know, at the sort of peak of the power of these countries.

Trevor Noah 8:46 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 8:46 They sort of traded in some of that power-

Trevor Noah 8:48 Mm

Eddie Fishman 8:48 ... um, in exchange to sort of, uh, you know, uh, legitimize their access to these, these weapons.

Trevor Noah 8:54 So they, so they made a deal with the rest of the world-

Eddie Fishman 8:56 Yes

Trevor Noah 8:56 ... or with themselves?

Eddie Fishman 8:57 And what the ... with the rest of the world.

Trevor Noah 8:59 Okay, okay.

Eddie Fishman 8:59 So the vast majority of countries have signed on to this.

Trevor Noah 9:01 Yes.

Eddie Fishman 9:02 And, and the bargain that they make is that they will not pursue nuclear weapons, but in exchange, they do have access to nuclear fuel, nuclear material, so that they can have nuclear power.

Trevor Noah 9:11 Right.

Eddie Fishman 9:11 Which by the way, we need, right? And I think in, in fact, we, we should have more of now. It's part of the reason, uh, that we're not making more progress getting ourselves off of fossil fuels-

Trevor Noah 9:19 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 9:19 ... 'cause we, we haven't built enough, uh, nuclear power. So Iran is a signatory, uh, to this Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The problem is that routinely,

Eddie Fishman 9:28 you know, as part of the, you know, being a signatory, you're inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Routinely, Iran lied about what they were doing. They were enriching uranium to levels that exceeded what they were allowed to do under the-

Trevor Noah 9:39 Oh, okay

Eddie Fishman 9:39 ... Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They're, um ... They had done, uh, research on actually cr- uh, producing nuclear weapons in the '90s. Uh, they had, uh, former Soviet scientists, by the way, who were probably, you know, uh, looking for a job after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Trevor Noah 9:52 As many of them were.

Eddie Fishman 9:53 Yes, exactly, who said, "Hey, I have something that, uh, one really good marketable skill."

Trevor Noah 9:56 Yes.

Eddie Fishman 9:57 "Uh, and I can sell that to Iran."

Trevor Noah 9:58 "I will put my profile on LinkedIn, and maybe somebody can hire me."

Eugene 10:02 You're hired.

Trevor Noah 10:02 That's what, that's what one of them said. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 10:05 [laughs] Yeah, it's like, uh, you know, looking for work on LinkedIn.

Trevor Noah 10:06 Yes. [laughs]

Eugene 10:07 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 10:07 "He, he has experience working with extremely volatile materials."

Eddie Fishman 10:11 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 10:11 "Will not mention which one." Wink, wink. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 10:15 It was a great business. I mean, it's how Nor- uh, North Korea also built up, uh, their nuclear program. Um-

Trevor Noah 10:19 Oh, so this was ... So basically, everyone who is sort of persona non grata in the geopolitical world, they got their scientists from Russia really, often.

Eddie Fishman 10:26 Oh, yeah.

Trevor Noah 10:27 Okay.

Eddie Fishman 10:27 Yeah, it's, like, uh, one of their main exports pretty much.

Trevor Noah 10:29 You guys got your scientists for NASA from Germany.

Eddie Fishman 10:32 Oh, yeah, the US, yeah, exactly. Right? I mean-

Trevor Noah 10:34 Oh, I didn't know that

Eddie Fishman 10:35 ... von Braun.

Trevor Noah 10:35 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 10:35 Von Braun, and then, and then of course, I mean, Einstein, you know, Oppenhei- Oppenheimer, a lot of those guys-

Trevor Noah 10:39 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 10:39 ... were Jews who i- ironically, you know, the Nazis didn't like the Jews, and so they went to the US-

Trevor Noah 10:44 They escaped to the-

Eddie Fishman 10:45 ... and then they built nuclear weapons. I mean, it's one of the, uh, the all-time great, you know, sort of, uh, ironies of history, right?

Trevor Noah 10:50 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 10:50 That the, the Nazis picked on the Jews. The Jews went to the US, built nuclear weapons, and then won World War II.

Trevor Noah 10:55 It feels like a perfect parable in a way.

Eddie Fishman 10:57 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 10:58 It's almost like people in trying to destroy someone, they then create their own end. You know, do you get what I'm saying?

Eddie Fishman 11:05 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 11:05 So they go like, "We have to stop them," but they're not doing anything, and then they go on to, like, help the other people who then destroy you basically and your empire.

Eddie Fishman 11:11 Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hubris, man. I mean, it's as old as the Greek myths, and it still plays out the same way now.

Trevor Noah 11:15 Yes, it is. It plays like a Greek tragedy. Yeah, in many ways.

Eddie Fishman 11:17 It really does. So look, Iran did cheat, and they did do a lot of things that suggested they really wanted a, a nuclear weapon, and just to, uh, address one important thing 'cause you're saying why does the US not like what Iran's doing.

Trevor Noah 11:29 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eddie Fishman 11:29 Um, the UN, so the en- the entire UN Security Council on multiple times, um, voted, uh, to condemn Iran and saying that Iran did have to stop, uh, enriching uranium.

Trevor Noah 11:38 Got it, got it, got it.

Eddie Fishman 11:39 Because the whole international community was worried about what Iran was doing, and so, um, that's also, I guess, one of the ironies of Trump's approach is that lead- leading up to the 2015 nuclear deal that Obama, uh, and, and a number of the other world powers signed with Iran, international law was on the US's side, right? The, the U- the international law, which is what the UN provides, said that Iran should stop enriching uranium. Well, at this point- You know, the US has been the one that, uh, unilaterally pulled out of this deal in 2015, that imposed sanctions ig- uh, reimposed sanctions on Iran unilaterally, that now has attacked Iran twice in as many years without any, uh, international authorization.

Trevor Noah 12:18 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 12:18 And so, um, in some ways, uh, for, for a long period of, of time, the US was sort of on the right side of international law, but after Trump pulled out of the 20, uh, 15 nuclear deal, which he did in 2018, we've sort of been on the wrong side of international law.

Trevor Noah 12:31 So correct me if I'm wrong on this because I've never worked in a state department, nor do I have any qualifications. I've always felt like America just does what it wants, and then sometimes it's on the right side of international law, and then some- but it's not like America's trying to be on a side. America's just like, "Listen here, buddy. This is what I'm doing."

Eddie Fishman 12:48 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 12:48 "And if it's on or not on your side of the law, then that's your problem." But it seems like-

Eddie Fishman 12:53 Yeah

Trevor Noah 12:53 ... every time the UN ... You know, like, like if we think of, like, weapons of mass destruction-

Eddie Fishman 12:57 Totally.

Trevor Noah 12:57 You know, Saddam Hussein, all of that, America went against the UN, right? But America just did its thing, and then when something else is happening, America will do its thing that, uh, but it happens to be on the other side of the law.

Eddie Fishman 13:08 Mm.

Trevor Noah 13:08 So am I misunderstanding this, or is America just doing what it wants to do, and then sometimes it's for the law, and sometimes it's against international law?

Eddie Fishman 13:16 I think probably in broad brush strokes, you're, you're right, although different presidents, I think, take this to, you know, uh, further than others.

Trevor Noah 13:22 Oh, okay.

Eddie Fishman 13:22 And I will say ... Look, when I was, uh, in the US government, in the Obama administration, one of the things I did was I went to other countries, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia-

Trevor Noah 13:33 And sabotaged their countries

Eddie Fishman 13:35 ... uh, Vietnam. Exactly, yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 13:35 Say it. Say it.

Eugene 13:36 I was about to say eat, eat their noodles, mother. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 13:39 You, you know, you, you, we need more people like you in the world-

Eugene 13:41 Yeah

Trevor Noah 13:41 ... Eugene. You have goodness in your heart.

Eugene 13:42 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 13:43 Yeah, yeah. No, you're right, and ate noodles.

Eugene 13:45 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 13:45 No, no, I'm joking. You can sabotage-

Eugene 13:46 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 13:46 That's a good person, yeah. I will ... Yeah. Um, yeah, so basically what, what we would do, and this was when we were putting pressure on Iran, uh, in the early 2010s-

Trevor Noah 13:55 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 13:55 ... we would say, "Look, um, if you keep buying oil from Iran, you know, you, a Singaporean-

Trevor Noah 14:01 Okay

Eddie Fishman 14:01 ... uh, company, we will cut you off from the US dollar."

Trevor Noah 14:04 Oh.

Eddie Fishman 14:04 "We will use this key choke point in the global economy-"

Trevor Noah 14:07 Mm

Eddie Fishman 14:07 ... which is the US dollar-

Trevor Noah 14:08 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 14:08 ... critical for all international business. And so it was. I mean, we ... I, I didn't use quite the accent that you just used, uh, Trevor-

Trevor Noah 14:15 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 14:15 ... uh, although I probably should have. It would've made me more credible. Um, and we did sort of give these folks sort of binary choices, which was like, "Look, if you don't stop buying oil from Iran, you're gonna lose access to the world's most important currency, the US dollar." What I will say, though, is when you deliver that message to a foreign businessman or diplomat, like it doesn't

Eddie Fishman 14:34 usually go over well. They're like, "What the hell are you doing here, uh, in my..."

Trevor Noah 14:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eddie Fishman 14:37 And so what helped us in those days was to say, "Look, I'm just here because the UN, including your own country, has said-"

Trevor Noah 14:46 It's a good chance.

Eddie Fishman 14:46 "... that Iran shouldn't have a nuclear weapon."

Trevor Noah 14:47 Yes.

Eddie Fishman 14:47 "And guess what? Their oil sales are directly funding their nuclear program, so I'm just here to help you comply with your international obligations." And that may sound like, you know, glib or something like that, but it actually worked. And it made this ... It made it much more likely for the o- person on the other side of the table to be like, "Look, we are being pressured by the US, but-

Trevor Noah 15:04 Mm

Eddie Fishman 15:04 ... but truly, like, this is accurate." Um, it's a lot different if I just said that, like, "Look, the whole international community disagrees with me."

Trevor Noah 15:11 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 15:11 "We shouldn't be doing this."

Trevor Noah 15:12 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 15:12 "But still, um, you should stop doing business with Iran because I told you so," which is, by the way, that has been what Trump has tried to do, uh, with a lot of different countries in recent years, saying like, "If you don't do X or Y, I'm just gonna wall up your economy with tariffs or sanctions."

Trevor Noah 15:25 But there's no-

Eddie Fishman 15:26 And, and there's no sort of-

Trevor Noah 15:27 Okay

Eddie Fishman 15:27 ... uh, legitimization that helps it go down easier, which also means, um, not only is it, is it like a, a more awkward conversation, but like from a very practical, like self-interested perspective, that person on the other side of the table is way less likely to do what you want them to do.

Trevor Noah 15:41 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 15:41 I mean, it's how ... It's the same in, in, in, like, human relations, right?

Trevor Noah 15:43 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 15:43 If you try to, you know, persuade, uh, your kid to do something that they don't wanna do, um, they're much more likely to go along with it if they think that it's just. Uh-

Trevor Noah 15:51 And end up homeless

Eddie Fishman 15:52 ... you're, you're on the side of justice. What?

Trevor Noah 15:53 [laughs] They might just end up homeless is what-

Eddie Fishman 15:54 That's true

Trevor Noah 15:55 ... they're saying.

Eddie Fishman 15:55 Or you kick them out. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 15:56 That's my petrodollar.

Eddie Fishman 15:57 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 15:58 That's my- [laughs]

Eugene 16:00 Is to threaten them with homelessness.

Trevor Noah 16:01 Yeah. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 16:02 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 16:02 So you can do what Daddy says, neh?

Eugene 16:04 Or.

Trevor Noah 16:04 Or. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 16:08 [laughs]

Eugene 16:08 They grab me, "Listen here, buddy." [laughs]

Trevor Noah 16:11 Yeah, you gotta use that accent. It works. It's much more effective when you use it.

Eddie Fishman 16:13 It really, it really works well. Okay, so okay, so this, this, this is providing a lot of clarity.

Trevor Noah 16:17 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 16:17 So you, you had a world where Iran ... A- am I correct in assuming people don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon because it, it gives them more power? Or it's not because they think they'll use it, right?

Trevor Noah 16:30 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 16:31 It's a great ... I mean, I'm glad you brought this up, 'cause there's really two perspectives on this.

Trevor Noah 16:35 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 16:35 I think, like, the, the less common perspective, although some people have it, is that, you know, the Islamic Republic of Iran, like they are literally this messianic regime in which they are so committed to wiping Israel off the face of the earth that even if it means that they would destroy themselves, um, you know, in the process, that they would go ahead and use that nuclear weapon. I would say that's a minority opinion.

Trevor Noah 16:55 Okay.

Eddie Fishman 16:56 The, the more credible opinion amongst sort of national security experts, um, is that Iran is the world's largest, uh, state sponsor of terrorism. So groups like Hezbollah and Hamas-

Trevor Noah 17:08 Hamas

Eddie Fishman 17:08 ... that have killed lots of innocent people around the world, including Americans, are on the payroll of Iran. Iran has basically trained and created a lot of these groups. And so even if Iran wouldn't use a nuclear weapon itself, what happens if it gave some high-

Trevor Noah 17:22 Mm

Eddie Fishman 17:22 ... enriched uranium to Hezbollah, and Hezbollah said-

Trevor Noah 17:24 Oh, so then-

Eddie Fishman 17:25 That was-

Trevor Noah 17:25 Okay, so that's the cause, that's the real cause of concern.

Eddie Fishman 17:28 Yes. It is nuclear te- I mean, it, it's weird. I mean, I, I don't know if, if you guys, um, were in New York in like the 2000s.

Trevor Noah 17:36 No.

Eddie Fishman 17:36 But when, when this, when this issue really came up, it was like mid-2000s, like 2005, 2006, 2007, and the big fear then was that we would have a nuclear 9/11, that the next terrorist group wouldn't just fly a plane into the

Eddie Fishman 17:51 World Trade Center. Like, they would have like a, a bomb laced-

Trevor Noah 17:53 They send a bomb

Eddie Fishman 17:53 ... with enriched uranium.

Trevor Noah 17:55 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 17:55 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 17:56 Um, and it was a legitimate fear, right? Because Iran was hyper-charging its nuclear program and supporting these terrorist groups.

Trevor Noah 18:01 Well, this, this is ... Okay, this is an interesting question that I have actually then is-

Eddie Fishman 18:06 I like your phrasing. Was it a legitimate concern or was it a legitimate fear? 'Cause sometimes a fear can be legitimate because you have a fear- Mm-hmm ... and I can say that is a legitimate fear. Mm-hmm. But was the concern actually, like, legitimate? As in, was this based on something that could happen, or was it based on the idea that something could happen? Yeah. Which I know seems like semantics, but, but you understand what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sometimes people are afraid of something. Okay, here's an example. In America, people are terrified that their kids are gonna get kidnapped. Yeah. I- it just became a campaign in the United States at some point. Kids were going missing. They were on milk cartons. Mm. But as a percentage of the population- I've never understood that milk carton thing, but anyway. Yeah, but as a percentage of the population, it was huge, right? Mm. I, I mean, it was small. It was tiny. It was insignificant, not to the parents of those children- Yes, yes ... and not to their communities, but in terms of how it made people feel, they started writing laws that said your kid could not go unattended at a park. They couldn't, like, walk home. If your child is found, like, by themselves, they'll take the child, sometimes away from the parents, but they created such a mass hysteria that now they've undermined the very existence of childhood- Yes ... in my opinion, right? Yes. And the freedoms of it. The fear was real. Mm-hmm. But the thing that the fear was based on wasn't necessarily as real as people thought it was. So in that, was, was it a real issue, or was the fear the thing that people were focusing on? Yeah. I mean, I think it was a, a real issue, just given the stakes, right? Um, and given that 9/11 did happen, right? It had just happened. Yeah, like- Okay ... so we had just experienced a ter- a massive, I mean, coordinated terrorist attack, you know, four planes that were hijacked. No, shook the world. Yeah. Yeah, right. So I do think it was legitimate. Um, and this is one thing that I'm conflicted about. It's also why I think, um, hon- honestly evaluating foreign policy is so difficult, is that you don't know the counterfactual, right? You don't know, like, well, what, what would have happened if we had not done this? Yes. Right? And so, like, if you look at the- Interesting ... track record of US policy since 9/11, I would say most people, including myself, would say we, like, over, we exaggerated the impact, like, how big of a threat terrorism was. We, like, were scarred by 9/11. It did take away a lot of our freedoms. You know, I remember, uh, as a kid, uh, you know, uh, one, the first time I flew alone, uh, my mom and dad taking me through security- Pulling you to the side ... and, like, dropping me out off at the gate. Yeah, yeah. And so, like, we have lost a lot of our, of our freedoms. Yes. Yeah. Um, at the same time, we have not had another 9/11 scale terrorist attack in the United States, and so it's, it's, I'm j- so I'm just being honest. Like, I'm genuinely conflicted on this- Yeah, yeah ... because, like, is this because- Because you don't know ... of government policy? And if you look at Europe, for instance, like, there have been these massive terrorist attacks, right? Yeah. I mean, if you remember in the 2010s in Paris. The Paris- The Bataclan ... Paris was a huge one. And, yeah. Yeah, that night in Paris. Charlie Hebdo and, um- Mm-hmm ... and there were on- ones in Brussels, you know, so, um, yeah. Yeah. It, it, it, it really becomes difficult because on the one hand, you wanna live in a world where you don't allow isolated incidents to define how you live your daily life. Right. But on the other hand, you can't ignore them as if they never happened. Mm-hmm. Do, do you know what I mean? Yeah. So, like, you're in this weird place of, like, how, how much do you preemptively act, and how much do you not, and how much ... So it feels like America's in this place where it's going, "We do not wanna get to the place where we have to think about preemptively acting or not acting when it comes to uranium or nuclear weapons with Iran." That's right. That's it. That's, that's essentially where it is. Just as a, as a side note, does North Korea have nuclear weapons? Yeah, they've got a full suite of nuclear weapons. Oh, okay, but this is interesting. So if they have nuclear weapons, wh- wh- what are they doing with them? Yeah. I mean, they ... So far, they've not used them, right? Uh, thankfully. Uh, I think that they feel like they have a sense of impunity. Uh, so there's a fear that they could launch some sort of preemptive attack on South Korea. I know South Koreans are generally worried about that. Yeah. All the time. All the time. Um- Yeah ... I don't know if you guys have been there recently, but it's a, you know ... Uh, Seoul is within, you know, uh, within range of a lot of the artillery- Right, you can just kinda- ... and whatnot from, uh, from North Korea. So, so far the answer is they haven't used them, but there is a fear that it could embolden, uh, North Korea over time to act aggressively. So I think that's the other, the other part that's maybe a little bit n- more nuanced is even if an Iran or North Korea isn't going to use nuclear weapons, do they feel that by virtue of having nuclear weapons, that they can actually push the envelope a lot more below the use of nuclear weapons? Right. Right? So maybe North Korea wouldn't use a nuke against South Korea, but would they feel emboldened to attack South Korea? Um- Because they have a nuke. Because they have a nuke. Right. And, and, like, this is one of the, I think, honestly tragic lessons of recent history is, you know, the countries that have given up nuclear weapons or that have developed some parts of a nuclear program but then didn't cross the threshold have actually fared a lot worse than the countries that have developed nuclear weapons, right? I mean, this is- Damn, Eddie. It's bad. That's a crazy paradox when you think about it. Mm. Yeah. I think there's an incentive. I mean, if you look at Gaddafi, right? I mean, the, the Libyans- That's a crazy paradox when

Eddie Fishman 23:04 you think about it. Mm. Yeah. Everyone who didn't get a nuke, look what happened to them. Look what happened. But you don't want them to get a nuke, but if you don't get a nuke- [laughs] You might wanna get a nuke, Eugene. It- Just go on LinkedIn, man. [laughs] Yeah, but you see, I ... This is what, this is- [laughs] So this is what, this is what I love about- I love this. Okay. No, but, but, but Eddie, this is what I like about your br- Eddie ... your brain and the way you, and the way you think and the way you write and the way you- [laughs] I can't believe you did that to me. [laughs] That was funny. [laughs] No, you, y- Oh ... so I think what I've, what I've always enjoyed about your work is that you grapple. Yeah. Right? Grappling is, is, is necessary whenever, whenever it comes to issues of state or anything large because it's not simple. Mm-hmm. We wanna act like it's simple, but it's really not simple. Because what you just said is the ultimate paradox. We would ... Many people would argue that we don't want other countries to have nuclear weapons, let's say, right? We don't want more nuclear weapons out there, but we also cannot deny all the countries that have the nuclear weapons- That don't have. Mm-hmm ... seem like they're living- Easy target ... a more chilled life- Yeah ... you know, if you have the nuke- Yeah ... versus if you don't. Yeah. And then the ones who have it aren't, also aren't using it.

Trevor Noah 24:14 So if you're working in the State Department and you're looking at this information, at what point does the paradigm shift, or does it ever shift? Like, do you have to game these things out and ask yourself if the idea you're working from is correct or incorrect?

Eddie Fishman 24:28 Yeah. It's a good ... I mean, it's a fair question, and there are ... I mean, it's an extremely, um, heretical opinion. There are some scholars who believe that nuclear proliferation isn't actually as bad of a thing because, um, it creates more stability, right? I mean, we, we used to in the US talk about trying to do regime change in North Korea. We don't really talk about that anymore, right? I mean, there, there's a reason Iran was attacked.

Trevor Noah 24:51 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 24:51 But North Korea wasn't, right?

Trevor Noah 24:52 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 24:52 Um, and so I think my own view on that is that nuclear proliferation is very dangerous. I mean, if you look even at the history of nuclear incidents when there's only a very small handful of countries that have nuclear weapons, we've come very close to accidental nuclear war-

Trevor Noah 25:08 Right

Eddie Fishman 25:08 ... on a number of occasions.

Trevor Noah 25:09 Really?

Eddie Fishman 25:09 Like ... Oh, yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:10 When?

Eddie Fishman 25:11 In the '80s. Uh, you know, uh, ev- I think even in the '90s during the Clinton administration, um, there was ... Uh, it was actually after the end of the, the Soviet Union. I think it was-

Trevor Noah 25:20 Mm

Eddie Fishman 25:20 ... um, you know, Russia during the Yeltsin period. Their, their radars picked up that, uh, uh, there was an ICBM incoming.

Trevor Noah 25:25 The flight coming over the North Pole.

Eddie Fishman 25:26 Right.

Trevor Noah 25:27 Right? And then-

Eddie Fishman 25:27 And I, and I think, thank- he thankfully Yeltsin was like, "This doesn't make any sense."

Trevor Noah 25:31 No, it wasn't Yeltsin actually.

Eddie Fishman 25:32 Like, why would-

Trevor Noah 25:32 It was-

Eddie Fishman 25:32 It was not?

Trevor Noah 25:33 It was crazy.

Eugene 25:33 Gorbachev.

Trevor Noah 25:33 No, it wasn't anyone in leadership.

Eddie Fishman 25:35 Who was it?

Trevor Noah 25:36 It was one man who was tasked with doing the thing.

Eugene 25:40 Oh, pressing the button.

Trevor Noah 25:41 Yo, the, the-

Eugene 25:42 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 25:42 ... the story went ... This is, like, one of my favorite stories 'cause I remember watching this and being like, "Wait, what happened?"

Eugene 25:47 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 25:47 They saw the ICBM coming, I think it was, like, over the North Pole somewhere. They, they were like-

Eugene 25:51 Yes, yes, yes

Trevor Noah 25:51 ... "It's coming for Russia." Top chain of command all goes, "It's coming in. The bomb is coming in. What do we do? What do we do? Counter strike. What do we..." They agree, "We are striking back. We're striking back. We're striking back." You know everyone has to now send codes.

Eugene 26:04 Mm.

Trevor Noah 26:04 Send codes.

Eugene 26:04 Wee, wee.

Trevor Noah 26:04 We're, ep. All the codes.

Eugene 26:06 Get there.

Trevor Noah 26:06 Get your keys.

Eugene 26:07 Two keys. One, two. Ah.

Trevor Noah 26:08 Exactly.

Eugene 26:08 You got it wrong. One, two. Ah, on three. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 26:11 No, wait. Are you gonna say three, and then we do it?

Eugene 26:13 I'll go, one, two.

Trevor Noah 26:14 One-

Eugene 26:14 Ah.

Trevor Noah 26:15 No, wait. Okay, okay.

Eugene 26:16 One.

Trevor Noah 26:16 Say three, then-

Eugene 26:16 Okay.

Trevor Noah 26:17 Why not say four then?

Eugene 26:18 One. Okay, okay.

Trevor Noah 26:18 Why not say on four?

Eugene 26:19 Okay, okay. One.

Trevor Noah 26:20 One, two, three.

Eugene 26:20 Two, three. Four.

Trevor Noah 26:22 Four. Yeah, now we got it. You see? I don't know why they do that.

Eugene 26:24 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 26:24 So anyway, so what, what happened then was the chain of command brings it down. It gets down to one man who's in his bunker, and the job is to launch, and then he went, "This doesn't make sense." He just of his own volition went-

Eugene 26:39 No way. It's a random guy

Trevor Noah 26:40 ... he is like, "It doesn't make sense."

Eugene 26:41 He went rogue under there.

Trevor Noah 26:42 The guy said, "It doesn't make sense."

Eugene 26:44 He disobeyed an order.

Trevor Noah 26:45 My man, the biggest order.

Eugene 26:47 To launch.

Trevor Noah 26:48 The biggest order, and I, I forget what his reasoning was. It was something along the lines of him not understanding why there was only one or why they were launching the way they were. He just was like, "It doesn't make sense."

Eugene 26:58 Yeah, something's not right.

Trevor Noah 26:59 And then he didn't launch, and then after the point when it would have been too late, they realized it was a, a, a satellite or a malfunction or something was causing the reading, and it-

Eugene 27:10 It was not an intercontinental?

Trevor Noah 27:11 It wasn't. There was no bomb coming in at all, and then they phoned him back, and they're like, "Ah," and he's like, "I didn't launch." And then they were stuck because now they had to-

Eugene 27:21 Yeah

Trevor Noah 27:21 ... choose between punishing him-

Eugene 27:23 Or

Trevor Noah 27:23 ... for disobeying instructions or applaud him for saving the world arguably. He saved the world.

Eugene 27:31 Yes,

Eugene 27:32 he did.

Eddie Fishman 27:32 Man, give that guy the Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize.

Trevor Noah 27:34 He should get it.

Eddie Fishman 27:35 Yes.

Eugene 27:35 Absolutely.

Trevor Noah 27:35 He should, but then they, they didn't punish him to the full extent.

Eugene 27:39 For disobeying an order, obviously. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 27:41 Yeah, but they dis- they disappeared him, and he's like a, he's like a folk hero in Russia, but they just disappeared him, but not like to a gulag. He just ... They were like, "You just go away. Thank you, but go away."

Eddie Fishman 27:52 Wow. Like a witness protection program.

Trevor Noah 27:53 Yeah, in a way.

Eddie Fishman 27:54 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 27:54 In a way.

Eddie Fishman 27:55 That's wild.

Trevor Noah 27:56 But I didn't know there was, like, multiple times.

Eddie Fishman 27:58 Oh, yeah. But I mean, to, to, to, like, that whole story, like, imagine ... And that's only when you have two countries that have large nuclear arsenals.

Trevor Noah 28:04 Right.

Eddie Fishman 28:04 By the way, China now is in the process of making that three countries. But then imagine if that was 10 countries or 20, right? I mean, the, just, uh, the, the risk goes up exponentially the more players you have in this, in this really awful game.

Eugene 28:20 When did the world ever become scared of the damage that a nuclear bomb can do? Was it Hiroshima where people ... Do you think Hiroshima was actually a demonstration-

Eddie Fishman 28:29 Oh, yeah

Eugene 28:29 ... of what these weapons can be? You think it was necessary for it to happen for people to go, "These things are real"? Because I think had that not happened, we would think maybe this is not real.

Eddie Fishman 28:39 I'm, I'm with you, by the way, and I think this is another sort of broad lesson of statecraft. I was mentioning one is sort of, uh, counterfactuals are important.

Eugene 28:46 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 28:46 And you have to ask yourself, like, honestly, like, "What would have happened had we not done X?"

Eugene 28:50 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 28:50 Right? Another one is, you know, uh, unfortunately, for weapons to be taken seriously, oftentimes they have to be used. Um, you make the, um, example of Hiroshima, uh, and Nagasaki, which for sure, I mean, you would not ... I mean, I don't think anyone believed, uh, the power of these weapons. They were ... You know, it was a very closely guarded US national-

Eugene 29:10 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 29:10 ... secret before, uh, these attacks. I think this is actually relevant for today, too, because, you know, the Strait of Hormuz, right?

Eugene 29:17 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 29:18 Um, even going back to when I was, uh, in government, whenever you would sort of war game what happens, uh, with a war against, uh, Iran, you'd be worried that they would close the Strait of Hormuz. Wouldn't this be so bad for-

Trevor Noah 29:29 That was in the war games?

Eddie Fishman 29:29 Oh, for sure. I mean, 'cause it's, like, the key maritime choke point, uh, you know?

Trevor Noah 29:33 Okay, so it's, so it's the most logical thing that they would do.

Eddie Fishman 29:36 Yes. Although I think one of the, uh, suppositions that, um, military planner strategists had for many years was that for Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, they would have to use these sea mines, right? They're sort of the floating mines that just blow up if, if you hit them. They've got thousands of them, and the, the sort of the, like, sort of the logic was, well, sea mines don't discriminate-

Trevor Noah 29:59 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 29:59 ... if you're a tanker carrying Saudi oil versus Iranian oil.

Eugene 30:02 Yeah, like the landmines in Mozambique. Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 30:04 Right. Yeah, they don't discriminate, and so this would be just as bad for Iran as it-

Eugene 30:07 Mm

Eddie Fishman 30:07 ... would be for all the other countries in the Gulf, um, because Iran also depends on-

Eugene 30:11 Mm

Eddie Fishman 30:11 ... the Strait of Hormuz to sell its own oil.

Trevor Noah 30:12 Okay. Right.

Eddie Fishman 30:12 So everyone was like, "Well, maybe they wouldn't do this because it would be, like, economically suicidal for them."

Eugene 30:17 For themselves, yeah.

Eddie Fishman 30:18 But what they did in, you know, February and March of this year, um, after the US and Israel struck Iran, they didn't use sea mines. They just used these drones and missiles that cost, like, 20, $30,000 a pop.

Eugene 30:31 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 30:31 They struck, like, a dozen or so ships, not even that many. And, and just, uh, for scale, um, before the war, you had, like, 150 ships going through the strait on a daily basis.

Eugene 30:39 Okay.

Eddie Fishman 30:40 All they struck was, like, a dozen ships, and that was enough then to get, like, the crews of these ships to be like, "Hell no, I'm not sailing through that strait."

Eugene 30:46 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 30:46 Right? And this is, like, at a cost of, like, less than a couple hundred thousand dollars if you add it up. And so what they did was they completely confounded expectations. They showed that they could close the strait, A, at very low cost, and B-

Eugene 30:58 Very low cost

Eddie Fishman 30:58 ... in a selective manner, right?

Eugene 30:59 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 30:59 No matter where-

Eugene 31:00 Oh

Eddie Fishman 31:00 ... they could sell their oil

Eugene 31:02 ... they could choose who gets...

Eddie Fishman 31:02 They could say, like, "Your oil's good, your oil's bad." Like, "Your ship isn't going through, but, like, we're gonna sell all of our oil." That was the surprise. But now that the world has seen that-

Eugene 31:11 Mm

Eddie Fishman 31:12 ... that is, like, a killer, killer economic weapon, and, like, you can't unsee it, right? That's just, like, a fact, uh, from here on out.

Eugene 31:19 And, and you know what also it exposed? The average person like myself, I do not understand how oil gets from one place to another in a steady stream.

Eddie Fishman 31:27 What do you mean?

Eugene 31:27 So when the Strait of Hormuz was closed... 'Cause in my head, I imagine this. Oil gets drilled, refined-

Eddie Fishman 31:32 Yeah

Eugene 31:32 ... gets taken into a tanker, then the tanker makes its way, and then when the tanker reaches that side, they're like, "Oh, we've got more that are coming." Then they send another one, but actually they go out in almost, like, a straight line like this, then it becomes a pipeline but of ships.

Eddie Fishman 31:45 Oh, wow.

Eugene 31:46 So if the strait closes, it doesn't mean the oil does not reach. It, like, it c- could take months before-

Eddie Fishman 31:50 Yeah

Eugene 31:50 ... a country gets affected.

Eddie Fishman 31:52 Oh, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

Eugene 31:52 Because now all of a sudden, the, the convoy, the caravan, as it were, gets disrupted.

Eddie Fishman 31:57 So we only, that's why we only notice the, it's delayed.

Eugene 32:00 Yes.

Eddie Fishman 32:00 The impact is delayed is because the last ships already left and were on their way.

Eugene 32:03 Mm-hmm, they've left already. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 32:03 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 32:04 So just to give him his props, Stanislav Petrov.

Trevor Noah 32:07 Oh.

Eddie Fishman 32:08 We should a- we should have a, a world-

Eugene 32:10 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 32:11 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 32:11 ... Stanislav, Stanislav Petrov Day.

Eugene 32:13 We'll have soup in the, in the corner.

Eddie Fishman 32:14 He wa- yeah, he was a, he was a Russian lieutenant, uh, passed away in 2017, I believe, but this man was literally-

Trevor Noah 32:21 No way.

Eddie Fishman 32:21 Yeah, yeah. He was, he was the one.

Trevor Noah 32:23 Wow.

Eddie Fishman 32:24 He was a full-on, uh... He was the commander of the, of the Soviet military protocol. Oh, no, he, he disobeyed the orders-

Trevor Noah 32:31 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 32:31 ... against Soviet military protocol, and this was shortly after there had been an attack on a plane, I guess, but he suspected a false alarm, decided to wait for confirmation that never came. That never came.

Trevor Noah 32:44 Wow.

Eddie Fishman 32:44 And-

Eugene 32:45 I, I, I, I think you just-

Eddie Fishman 32:46 Yeah

Eugene 32:46 ... y- you just leapfrogged for me Yuri Gagarin.

Trevor Noah 32:49 [laughs]

Eugene 32:49 He's, he's up there now because he saved lives. He didn't go up a rocket and go hang out in space.

Eddie Fishman 32:54 So basically what he did was-

Eugene 32:55 It's amazing

Eddie Fishman 32:56 ... just, just so everyone has the full story and correctly-

Eugene 32:58 Yes

Eddie Fishman 32:58 ... what he actually did was he got the message from the nuclear guys to be like, "Yo, the nuke's coming in."

Eugene 33:02 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 33:02 "We've gotta, we've gotta fight." And then he just didn't tell his superiors 'cause he's like, "If they know, we go into war."

Trevor Noah 33:07 Oh, wow.

Eddie Fishman 33:08 That's actually what he did. And then he said no.

Eugene 33:12 That's amazing.

Eddie Fishman 33:12 He said-

Trevor Noah 33:13 Yeah.

Eugene 33:13 That's a hero. What's his name? Petrov?

Eddie Fishman 33:15 Yeah.

Eugene 33:17 He-

Eddie Fishman 33:17 That's, that's, that's the person we, we mostly owe U- There might not be life on Earth if it weren't for this guy. Stanislav Petrov.

Eugene 33:24 But is that the-

Eddie Fishman 33:24 Un- unspoken heroes.

Eugene 33:26 Yeah, until today.

Eddie Fishman 33:27 Huh?

Eugene 33:28 'Cause you just spoke him.

Eddie Fishman 33:29 Stanislav Petrov.

Eugene 33:30 I just spoke him.

Eddie Fishman 33:30 We must say his name all the time.

Eugene 33:31 You'll just go and discover

Eugene 33:32 in Miami. Now he's going, "Ah."

Trevor Noah 33:34 [laughs]

Eugene 33:34 [laughs] "They have to find a new cosmos." [laughs]

Trevor Noah 33:37 [laughs]

Eugene 33:39 This domino effect, or is it just a myth, Eddie, that if one country launches, another one launches, another one will launch, another one launch, and there won't be life on Earth?

Eddie Fishman 33:48 Um, yeah, I mean, I, I think that it's more relevant in terms of, like, the US and Russia, just 'cause we have these massive arsenals, that there's this concern that once... If the, if Russia were to think that there were incoming nuclear ICBMs, if they didn't strike back before those ICBMs landed-

Trevor Noah 34:07 ICBM is intercontinental ballistic missile, right?

Eddie Fishman 34:09 Exactly.

Trevor Noah 34:09 Okay.

Eddie Fishman 34:10 Yeah, so these are missiles that, you know, within 15, 20 minutes can go-

Trevor Noah 34:13 Yes

Eddie Fishman 34:13 ... from the US to a target in Russia.

Trevor Noah 34:15 Yes. As we call them in South Africa, express missiles, not local or station missiles.

Eugene 34:20 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 34:20 These are long distance missiles. For New Yorkers, it's also the same thing on the subway.

Eddie Fishman 34:24 It's express line.

Trevor Noah 34:24 Yeah, there's express missiles, and then there's-

Eugene 34:26 You don't wanna be on the express line by mistake

Trevor Noah 34:27 ... one-stop missiles. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 34:28 [laughs]

Eugene 34:28 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 34:30 Yeah. I mean, I, I think the concern is that if you didn't strike back-

Trevor Noah 34:34 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 34:34 ... and it was a big enough strike, it could wipe out your ability to retaliate.

Trevor Noah 34:37 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 34:37 And so, um, yeah. I mean, the, the o- the, the whole thing is confounded now too because you also have nuclear submarines, so you've got these guys on, uh, on subs that theoretically, even if your entire country was destroyed-

Trevor Noah 34:48 And they're s-

Eddie Fishman 34:48 ... they could fire back

Trevor Noah 34:48 ... they're constantly just circling the globe, right?

Eddie Fishman 34:50 Exactly.

Trevor Noah 34:50 They're, like, hiding from each other. It's a game of hide and seek.

Eddie Fishman 34:53 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 34:53 There's nuclear submarines everywhere in the world all the time just hiding, waiting to get a call to shoot a nuke.

Eugene 35:00 And you see, that's another propaganda myth that keeps going around, that nuclear submarines, you would think they're just nuclear-powered submarines patrolling, but they're actually nuclear bombs.

Eddie Fishman 35:09 Well, they're both. Some of them s- yeah, you have-

Trevor Noah 35:11 Some of them

Eddie Fishman 35:11 ... yeah, yeah, some.

Trevor Noah 35:12 Some nukes, Eugene, not all. This guy, #allnukes. Eh, eh, some nukes, Eugene.

Eugene 35:18 Some nukes are better than others.

Trevor Noah 35:19 Eugene is a nuke hater, Eddie.

Eddie Fishman 35:22 [laughs]

Eugene 35:24 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 35:24 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 35:24 But this, this... Okay, this to me feels like a... It just feels precarious.

Trevor Noah 35:28 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 35:28 It feels like we're living in a world where we are one madman or one wrong decision away from everyone being embroiled in a nuclear apocalypse or in a, a war that didn't even need to start. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, that is reality. Um, and I think maybe just another point, I mean, one of, one of the things that's often guided my own decisions in life, like what to do, is trying to demystify things. You know-

Trevor Noah 35:55 Mm

Eddie Fishman 35:55 ... what are, what are, you know, uh, topics or, uh, you know, industries that I think are interesting that I wanna learn about?

Trevor Noah 36:00 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 36:01 And I was ... When I was in, in college, I really wanted to demystify, like, how national security decisions are made, part of the reason I went into government too. And like, I will say to the, the majority of people who haven't sat in the situation room to see how these decisions are made-

Trevor Noah 36:14 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 36:14 ... even in an administration where I really respected the leadership. In the Obama administration, it was highly professional. Like, these are human beings, right?

Trevor Noah 36:22 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 36:22 Like, they have- Good days, they have bad days, um, they're tired, they get sick. You know, like, peop-

Trevor Noah 36:28 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 36:28 Like they, it's, uh-

Trevor Noah 36:30 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 36:30 It's not for the faint of heart, I think maybe to, when you start realizing, like the, the, the amount that can go wrong, and in some ways it's a miracle that more -

Trevor Noah 36:37 Hasn't gone wrong

Eddie Fishman 36:38 ... doesn't go wrong. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 36:40 We'll be right back after this short break. [upbeat music] Let's talk a little bit about the choke points of it all. You know, you famously wrote about choke points, and I think it was one of the most in-depth looks at how you can run the world with a new type of weapon. For a long time, people thought the best weapon to win a war with was one that, you know, made someone bleed, and then over time people started realizing, no, the real weapon you wanna use is one that bleeds their wallets.

Eddie Fishman 37:17 Yep.

Trevor Noah 37:18 You know? The US seems like it's, it's in that place, or it has been in that place for a long time, and now we're starting to see either the cracks of that system or the beginning of a new system on, on America's side. Let, let's break it down into two parts. One, what do people misunderstand about the petrodollar? 'Cause a lot of people talk about the petrodollar now. Everyone's like, "Oh, the petrodollar, the petrodollar, and Iran, and Ch- China's

Trevor Noah 37:44 buying oil using the yuan." What do you think people misunderstand about the petrodollar?

Eddie Fishman 37:49 So the petrodollar is just sort of one part of the broader dollar system. I mean, it's an important part, because if you just think about what a currency is, right?

Trevor Noah 37:58 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 37:58 It's used for payments, it's used for prices.

Trevor Noah 38:02 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 38:02 Or we call it unit of account, like if I'm gonna sell you something, what price am I gonna do it in? And it's also used for investments.

Trevor Noah 38:07 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 38:08 Right? When you think about payments, uh, you know, something like 15% of global trade is just oil. It's by far the most traded-

Trevor Noah 38:16 Commodity

Eddie Fishman 38:17 ... good in the world.

Trevor Noah 38:17 Yeah. Wow.

Eddie Fishman 38:18 I mean, you just come out, I mean, the most traded thing.

Trevor Noah 38:19 Good.

Eddie Fishman 38:19 Right, yeah.

Trevor Noah 38:20 Jeez.

Eddie Fishman 38:20 Um, I mean, it's, it's wild when you think about the scale. The fact that, you know, the most traded good in the world is priced in dollars and largely paid for in dollars-

Trevor Noah 38:29 Mm

Eddie Fishman 38:29 ... means that there's more demand for dollars around the world. Um, it's not the only factor about why the dollar is such an important currency. I mean, I think arguably now just as important is the fact that, you know, our stock market in the US is something like 80% of global equity market capitalization.

Trevor Noah 38:47 What?

Eddie Fishman 38:47 So if you add up all the stock markets of the world, like US stock market is 80%-

Trevor Noah 38:50 The US is 80%.

Eddie Fishman 38:51 Oh, yeah.

Trevor Noah 38:52 Man.

Eddie Fishman 38:53 I mean, I mean, you've got, you know, a couple companies in the US that are bigger than most other countries' stock markets.

Trevor Noah 38:58 Damn, I didn't know it was that big, though.

Eddie Fishman 38:59 Yeah. Um, so I mean, and our bond market's the biggest. So generally, if you, no matter where you are in the world, if you're generating wealth, uh, if you're a country, if you're an individual, if you're a company, you're, you're generally investing it in the US.

Trevor Noah 39:09 The US, yeah.

Eddie Fishman 39:09 But, but look, what this all boils down to is that when money crosses borders-

Trevor Noah 39:15 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 39:16 ... and the, the sort of the best metric we have for that is what's called foreign exchange transactions. It's when you take one currency and exchange it for another. By far the biggest sort of market of them all, $7 trillion a day just gets swapped in foreign exchange markets. 90% of those transactions have the dollar on one side of, or the other.

Trevor Noah 39:34 No way.

Eddie Fishman 39:35 So like, I mean, uh, you know, basically trying to travel the world without, or trying to do business across borders without access to the dollar is like trying to travel without a passport. You just can't do it, you know? So, um, the issue with the petrodollar would be, well, if China successfully takes this 15% of the trade that happens in the world and changes it from the dollar to the RMB-

Trevor Noah 39:58 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 39:58 ... that could be sort of the first crack in this overall edifice-

Trevor Noah 40:02 Okay, okay

Eddie Fishman 40:02 ... that underpins the dollar. Um, the, the dollar's central role in the global economy is absolutely imperative for our way of life in, in the United States. Um, we run these giant budget deficits every single year, um, because we can just borrow money-

Trevor Noah 40:15 Mm

Eddie Fishman 40:15 ... uh, overseas, and that's because there's basically infinite demand for-

Trevor Noah 40:18 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 40:19 ... uh, US treasuries, our, our government debt. But then, uh, to your point, Trevor, when it comes to economic warfare, which by the way, has become the central way that countries compete with each other today.

Trevor Noah 40:29 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 40:29 Unlike nuclear weapons, you actually can use economic weapons.

Trevor Noah 40:32 Mm. Right.

Eddie Fishman 40:32 Um, the key economic weapon that the United States has is the dollar.

Trevor Noah 40:37 So they'll cut you off from the dollar that ... So, so then explain to me why, why the US didn't use that for Iran. Like, I don't understand why the US didn't cut Iran off, or were they not able to cut Iran off? Or ... 'Cause, 'cause what's happening right now, it seems messy.

Eddie Fishman 40:52 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 40:53 And the whole world is paying for it. Everywhere from South Africa through to, you know, Australia, people are paying more for their petrol, people are gonna pay more for their gas, they're paying more for the, the average good. It's happening in America as well. You're seeing gas, I mean, some places it's crazy, at $9, $6 generally. Like, it feels like it's messy. W- w- w- w- when you run those, those games, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a- I'm assuming not all of them are, like, war games.

Eddie Fishman 41:17 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 41:18 Are there other scenarios that the US could have pursued?

Eddie Fishman 41:21 Look, I mean, we did pursue economic warfare against Iran. That was the strategy that originated in the second term of George W. Bush.

Trevor Noah 41:28 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 41:29 Um, it was actually, uh, kind of interesting. Uh, his, um, undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, the guy who oversaw all the sanctions programs, um, he had heard Bush make this comment where Bush was like, "Sanctions have no utility against Iran. They're never gonna work."

Trevor Noah 41:45 Okay.

Eddie Fishman 41:45 And he sort of took that as a personal challenge, and one day he was actually sitting in a hotel in Bahrain flipping through the Financial Times when he came across an article about a Swiss bank that had cut ties with Iran of its own volition.

Trevor Noah 41:56 Hm.

Eddie Fishman 41:57 And kind of a light bulb went off with him whenever he was like, "Hold on a second, like maybe I don't need to persuade other governments to shun Iran. I could literally just go to bankers."

Trevor Noah 42:04 Institutions, yeah.

Eddie Fishman 42:05 Yeah, bankers in London or Singapore or Frankfurt or wherever, and persuade them not to do business with Iran of their own volition. And if they don't agree, um, you know, I could threaten to cut them off, uh, from the US dollar. This was a strategy that's, the US started in the second Bush administration-

Trevor Noah 42:19 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 42:19 ... so 2006. This guy, Stuart Levey, was reappointed by Obama. Sort of quaint in, uh, 2026 America that a Republican-

Trevor Noah 42:26 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 42:26 ... uh, would stay on into a Democratic-

Trevor Noah 42:28 Oh, the good old days

Eddie Fishman 42:28 ... administration. Yeah, exactly. And, and he pursued that strategy, handed it off to his successors in the Obama administration, and that was the key to getting the Iran nuclear deal, right? It was putting Iran under-

Trevor Noah 42:37 Wow

Eddie Fishman 42:37 ... financial and economic pressure-

Trevor Noah 42:38 Okay

Eddie Fishman 42:39 ... that then got them to the table to, for the 2015 deal. And, you know, I think Trump Didn't ... It wasn't that he thought that the economic pressure wasn't working, it was that he thought if you only put more pressure on Iran you would get an even better deal.

Trevor Noah 42:50 Right.

Eddie Fishman 42:51 Didn't work, and so he tried, he tried to use military force instead. I think the irony of the current situation though is that what Iran is doing is they're basically taking a leaf from the US playbook. They're saying, "Well, hold on. The US has used its key choke point, which is the dollar, to try to pressure us."

Trevor Noah 43:08 Oh.

Eddie Fishman 43:09 "And so the way for us to fight back is to say, 'Well, what ch- what choke point do we have?' We have the Strait of Hormuz-"

Trevor Noah 43:14 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 43:14 ... the most important energy choke point in the world. 20% of global oil flow through this narrow waterway every day.

Trevor Noah 43:19 And that's, that's just oil. We're not even talking about sulfur.

Eddie Fishman 43:22 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 43:23 Like-

Eddie Fishman 43:23 Helium

Trevor Noah 43:23 ... yeah, all the things that you need to-

Eddie Fishman 43:24 Aluminum

Trevor Noah 43:24 ... grow crops around the world. We're talking about two-

Eddie Fishman 43:27 Fertilizers and-

Trevor Noah 43:27 Yeah, fertilizers and, I mean, they really, they're ... Are, are they in a more powerful position than the world thought?

Eddie Fishman 43:35 Much more. Yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the, like, what, but what we're seeing right now coming out of the war is that Iran may emerge from this war decimated militarily and economically, but strengthened strategically. Because they've shown the world that they can use this choke point to incredible effect.

Trevor Noah 43:51 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 43:52 And something I, you know, uh, it used to be that the US could, you know, uh, like I said, I used to go to places like Singapore and, uh, Japan, and you said, "Well, look, if you keep doing business with, with Iran, we'll cut you off from the dollar."

Trevor Noah 44:03 Right.

Eddie Fishman 44:03 Well, now what happens if Iran says to the Japanese, "Well, if unless you lift your sanctions on us, we won't allow your ships to go through the-"

Trevor Noah 44:10 Wow

Eddie Fishman 44:10 ... "Strait of Hormuz."

Trevor Noah 44:10 Wow.

Eddie Fishman 44:11 And that's what they're doing. I mean, they're cutting deals on a bilateral basis, like, with other countries-

Trevor Noah 44:16 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 44:16 ... saying, "Your ship can go through, your ship can't."

Trevor Noah 44:18 But you have to lift the sanctions.

Eddie Fishman 44:19 "You have to pay me a toll."

Trevor Noah 44:20 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 44:20 You know? Yeah, totally. So I mean, um, I think what we've seen, 'cause you're asking, like, what's the, what era is happening. I mean, I-

Trevor Noah 44:26 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 44:26 ... the, the whole thesis of my book, Choke Points, is that we're living in an age of economic warfare. I think for the first 15 or so years, or 20 years of that period, we were kind of in this unipolar world where it was like the US had all these economic weapons but other countries didn't. Well, now we have China with rare earth, uh, elements where they completely, uh, shocked the United States last year by cutting off our access. We have Iran with the Strait of Hormuz.

Trevor Noah 44:50 'Cause you need those for everything. Phones, uh, computers-

Eddie Fishman 44:53 Cars

Trevor Noah 44:54 ... cars, everything, right?

Eddie Fishman 44:54 I mean, they literally, they imposed an embargo on rare earth elements in April of last year-

Trevor Noah 44:59 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 44:59 ... on the US. And within weeks, Ford had to shut down its factory that makes the Explorer SUV. They just didn't have enough of these minerals.

Trevor Noah 45:07 Within weeks?

Eddie Fishman 45:08 Within weeks. Literally, the factory closed. And so I mean, other countries have choke points too. We're in an economic arms race right now where every country in the world is saying, "Well, what are the choke points that we have-"

Trevor Noah 45:19 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 45:19 ... "that we could use against our rivals? And then what are the choke points that our rivals have over us that make us vulnerable?" That is what's happening right now.

Trevor Noah 45:26 Okay, now at, at the risk of so- sounding like the Joker, why can't we all just get along? W- I don't understand why we're-

Eugene 45:35 I was hoping you don't say why so serious.

Trevor Noah 45:37 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 45:38 [laughs]

Eugene 45:38 I was like, wait, Trevor, this

Eugene 45:40 is a serious issue here.

Trevor Noah 45:41 [laughs]

Eugene 45:41 We've used words-

Trevor Noah 45:42 No

Eugene 45:42 ... like embargo.

Trevor Noah 45:43 No, we have, but I'm saying-

Eugene 45:44 And inflation. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Trevor Noah 45:44 ... okay, so, so hear me out. Hear me out on this.

Eugene 45:46 You're going hard here.

Trevor Noah 45:47 Hear, hear me out on this. Hear me out on this.

Eddie Fishman 45:48 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 45:49 This could be a very naive perspective and a very naive point of view.

Eddie Fishman 45:53 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 45:53 But it seems like we live in a world where there is, for the most part, mutually assured destruction now. You cannot just blow everything up everywhere. I mean, even looking at Russia and Ukraine.

Eddie Fishman 46:03 Mm.

Trevor Noah 46:06 For all intents and purposes, Russia could blow up Ukraine, right?

Eddie Fishman 46:10 I mean, they could use a nuclear weapon, sure.

Trevor Noah 46:11 That's what I mean.

Eddie Fishman 46:12 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 46:12 So they have nukes. They're not using the nukes. They could also blow up all of Ukraine, technically.

Eddie Fishman 46:17 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 46:18 They have the capability.

Eddie Fishman 46:19 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 46:19 But they do not do it.

Eddie Fishman 46:20 Mm.

Trevor Noah 46:21 Uh, do you know why they do not do it?

Eddie Fishman 46:24 I think it would be the fastest way to u- unify the entire world-

Trevor Noah 46:27 The world against them

Eddie Fishman 46:28 ... against them.

Trevor Noah 46:28 Okay. So-

Eddie Fishman 46:29 And also, I mean, they're close by, I mean, with nuclear weapons too it's like they're ... It's like if you nuke New Jersey, I think New York is gonna get the nuclear fallout, uh, you know?

Trevor Noah 46:36 Okay, so they're close enough so-

Eddie Fishman 46:37 Yeah, so they're ... Oh, yeah. I mean, they're right next door, um, to Ukraine, so.

Trevor Noah 46:40 Right. So, so they, so then they sort of can't use the nukes on Ukraine, and they also can't blow up all of Ukraine because then people will come for them. And then the world also can't blow up Russia because I guess the world just doesn't do that. It feels like ... I don't know. I don't know why it feels like there's a lot of unnecessary posturing going on and things being blown up for no reason or, or, or maybe the wrong reasons.

Eddie Fishman 47:08 Definitely the wrong reasons.

Eugene 47:09 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 47:09 Yeah, and I, I don't understand why-

Eugene 47:10 I, I really think ... Sorry.

Trevor Noah 47:12 No, no, no. Go.

Eugene 47:13 I think it is necessary because if you look at the countries that have nuclear weapons, they have strong men that rarely get challenged during elections.

Trevor Noah 47:20 Okay.

Eugene 47:20 So if you have a person that says, "I'm the only person who can control this guide, this guard dog-"

Trevor Noah 47:24 Yeah. Yeah

Eugene 47:24 ... I'm the one it listens to, I'm the one who feeds it," do you really, really, really every four years want to change the person who's in charge of that guard dog? America, if you look at all of the countries that have nuclear weapons, is the only country that does that, and it just looks like the guy who's controlling the guard dog is going, "Do you think this is a good idea of changing me every four years?" I think that's why he was able to make a comeback, right?

Trevor Noah 47:46 You've ac-

Eugene 47:47 Because I think it subscribes to the-

Trevor Noah 47:47 You've actually made me realize-

Eugene 47:48 To the strong man agenda

Trevor Noah 47:49 ... maybe America should just elect its nuclear president separately.

Eugene 47:52 Exactly.

Trevor Noah 47:53 You, you ... It should be like a Supreme Court thing. Maybe for like 10, 15 years you just have one nu- nu- nuclear-

Eugene 47:57 Yeah, it's like you have a-

Trevor Noah 47:58 ... nuclear president

Eugene 47:58 ... NBA commissioner, yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 48:00 You have nuclear president, and you have president president.

Eddie Fishman 48:02 Right. You can have, like, a reality TV star as president, and then just, like, an extremely boring, like-

Trevor Noah 48:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Eddie Fishman 48:06 ... lawyer as, like, the nuclear president.

Trevor Noah 48:07 Yeah, you have, like, a Jerome Powell-

Eddie Fishman 48:08 Yeah. [laughs]

Eugene 48:08 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 48:08 ... but of nuclear weapons.

Eddie Fishman 48:10 It's not a bad idea.

Trevor Noah 48:10 Yeah, and you go like-

Eddie Fishman 48:11 Yeah

Trevor Noah 48:11 ... "You are just in charge of nukes."

Eddie Fishman 48:12 It's like exactly.

Trevor Noah 48:12 That's all you do.

Eugene 48:13 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 48:14 The war can f- people can fight the war-

Eugene 48:15 Yeah, but this guy-

Trevor Noah 48:16 ... but I'm, I'm the president of nukes.

Eugene 48:17 Yeah, because is there a country that has nuclear weapons that has had free and fair democratic elections-

Trevor Noah 48:23 Germany, no?

Eugene 48:23 ... running over four years all the time?

Trevor Noah 48:25 Germany.

Eddie Fishman 48:25 Macron in France, I think too.

Eugene 48:26 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 48:26 Do they have-

Eugene 48:27 Germany not have nukes?

Eddie Fishman 48:28 No, Germany does not have nukes.

Trevor Noah 48:28 Ah, of course. How could I forget?

Eugene 48:31 Does France have nukes?

Eddie Fishman 48:32 Yeah. And India has-

Eugene 48:33 Macron

Eddie Fishman 48:33 ... India has nukes.

Trevor Noah 48:35 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 48:35 India illegally has nukes.

Trevor Noah 48:36 Yeah, but-

Eddie Fishman 48:36 They're not part of the NPT.

Eugene 48:37 I don't see Modi going, Narendra Modi, going anywhere anytime soon. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 48:40 No, he's, he's ... He seems like he's in there.

Eugene 48:42 So and let's count all the countries that ... Do this for me.

Trevor Noah 48:45 Yeah, who does have nukes? USA.

Eugene 48:46 And then, and then o- out of all of them-

Trevor Noah 48:48 Yeah

Eugene 48:48 ... show us which ones are g- Most likely to be out of power or just came into power.

Eddie Fishman 48:53 So there are five, uh, according to this treaty we talked about-

Eugene 48:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Eddie Fishman 48:56 ... the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, there are five countries that can have nukes according to that.

Trevor Noah 48:59 Okay, so the can haves?

Eddie Fishman 49:00 US-

Trevor Noah 49:00 US

Eddie Fishman 49:00 ... Russia, China, France, UK.

Trevor Noah 49:03 Okay.

Eddie Fishman 49:04 There are a few countries that have nukes, they developed them outside of the bounds of international law-

Trevor Noah 49:07 Okay

Eddie Fishman 49:07 ... so technically illegal nuclear programs.

Trevor Noah 49:09 Okay, got it.

Eddie Fishman 49:10 India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea.

Trevor Noah 49:14 Huh.

Eugene 49:15 Okay, so-

Trevor Noah 49:15 What an interesting com- wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Eugene 49:17 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:17 But before you go on.

Eugene 49:17 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:18 I wanna know about these countries who are illegally developing nukes.

Eugene 49:21 Mm.

Trevor Noah 49:22 Can you explain this to me? Like, how did that happen?

Eddie Fishman 49:24 I mean, a lot of countries have sought to illegally develop nukes, including Iran, right? Um, the question is-

Trevor Noah 49:30 Yeah, but okay, but now they-

Eddie Fishman 49:30 ... how they've been able to be stopped. I mean, there are, they-

Trevor Noah 49:32 Yeah, but Eddie, you've, you've confused me here, Eddie

Eddie Fishman 49:33 Yeah, yeah

Trevor Noah 49:33 ... forgive me, forgive me. Uh, you know, I, I play video games and I tell jokes.

Eddie Fishman 49:37 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:37 So Eddie, you're, you've thrown my brain-

Eddie Fishman 49:39 You're underselling yourself, man

Trevor Noah 49:39 ... you've, you've thrown me-

Eugene 49:40 Tell us about, uh, what's his name? Petrov or something? [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:42 Yeah. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 49:42 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:43 What the hell about Petrov?

Eugene 49:44 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:45 Stanislav. Stanislav.

Eddie Fishman 49:45 Stanislav.

Trevor Noah 49:46 So, so-

Eugene 49:47 Thought it was Petrov at first

Trevor Noah 49:48 ... so, so this is-

Eddie Fishman 49:49 [laughs]

Eugene 49:49 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:49 Okay, you, you, you've confused me here. You've confused me.

Eddie Fishman 49:53 Um-

Trevor Noah 49:53 We are saying that Iran-

Eddie Fishman 49:55 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 49:55 ... is being bombed and has been sanctioned because it is illegally enriching uranium.

Eugene 50:00 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 50:01 Because it didn't agree to it in the terms of the ... So what it agreed to in the terms of its contract, it hasn't adhered to. It keeps failing the-

Eugene 50:08 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Trevor Noah 50:08 ... the inspections, right?

Eugene 50:09 That's right, mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 50:09 Okay, but it doesn't have nuclear weapons.

Eugene 50:11 Mm-mm.

Trevor Noah 50:11 But then we are saying that India, Pakistan, Israel, and-

Eddie Fishman 50:16 Uh, North Korea

Trevor Noah 50:16 ... and North Korea-

Eugene 50:18 Yeah

Trevor Noah 50:18 ... do have nuclear weapons, and they developed those nuclear weapons-

Eugene 50:22 Outside the treaty

Trevor Noah 50:22 ... illegally because they-

Eddie Fishman 50:23 They didn't sign, they're, they're not signatories to the treaty

Trevor Noah 50:25 ... or none of them signed-

Eugene 50:26 None of them signed the treaty, yeah

Trevor Noah 50:27 ... so if you don't sign, nothing can happen to you.

Eddie Fishman 50:29 I mean-

Trevor Noah 50:29 Why doesn't Iran-

Eddie Fishman 50:30 No, the, the international community, to be clear, has tried to stop all four of those countries from developing nuclear weapons, but to our point earlier, once they cross the threshold, what are you gonna do about it?

Trevor Noah 50:39 Yeah. So then everyone should ... No, no, now I'm on not ... Let me put it this way. I understand where Iran is coming from, not as a leadership and not as a ... I do not see the incentive to not have nuclear weapons, is what I'm saying. Do you understand?

Eugene 50:53 No, the incentive, really, yeah.

Trevor Noah 50:54 I cannot understand-

Eddie Fishman 50:55 Incentive is there, yeah

Trevor Noah 50:55 ... 'cause you've, 'cause you've just shown me-

Eugene 50:56 Incentive is 100%

Trevor Noah 50:56 ... you've just shown me four countries that have nukes, and now no one can do anything about it. Then I'm like, "Well, then why wouldn't I get a nuke?"

Eddie Fishman 51:03 Look, I think it particularly, and, uh, to, to Eugene's point, particularly country, authoritarian countries-

Trevor Noah 51:07 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 51:08 ... there's clearly an incentive, right? Because you're worried that some other country may come and say, you know, "You're illegitimate, we're gonna overthrow you."

Trevor Noah 51:16 Right.

Eddie Fishman 51:16 Um, so yeah. I mean, again, l- if you look at countries that have either given up their nukes or, you know, like, uh, Libya was sort of the classic case.

Trevor Noah 51:23 Libya.

Eddie Fishman 51:23 In the early 2000s-

Trevor Noah 51:25 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 51:25 ... Gaddafi cut a deal, uh, with the US to give up his nuclear weapons.

Trevor Noah 51:28 Boy, oh boy, did he pay the price.

Eddie Fishman 51:31 Um, you know. So I mean, look, I, I think, uh, Trevor, you're onto something here. It's, there's a reason why authoritarian regimes have pursued nuclear weapons, and I think another, this also gets us to another reason why there's fear about Iran getting a nuke, right?

Trevor Noah 51:43 Yeah.

Eugene 51:43 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 51:43 So let's say Iran did successfully get a nuclear weapon. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, all these other countries in, in the region, Turkey, who view themselves as potentially a rival to Iran-

Trevor Noah 51:55 Right

Eddie Fishman 51:56 ... they're gonna get nukes. So you wind up getting what? A sort of a cascade of nuclear proliferation.

Trevor Noah 52:01 Okay, so now, now I understand what you're saying. You're saying the secondary effects of people getting nukes might be more dangerous than the primary ones in that more people having nukes means more opportunities for something to go wrong with a nuke.

Eddie Fishman 52:13 Yes.

Trevor Noah 52:13 Not, not even people-

Eddie Fishman 52:14 Yeah

Trevor Noah 52:14 ... necessarily launching them.

Eddie Fishman 52:15 Yes.

Trevor Noah 52:15 So if everyone has a nuke and something goes wrong with a nuke or a nuclear dis- uh, facility or something-

Eddie Fishman 52:21 Yeah

Trevor Noah 52:22 ... then people are just, it's just because there were just more nukes out there.

Eddie Fishman 52:24 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 52:24 It's the same way if there are more guns in a society-

Eddie Fishman 52:27 Yes

Trevor Noah 52:28 ... it is more likely that someone will get shot-

Eddie Fishman 52:30 100%

Trevor Noah 52:30 ... even if it's a child finding their dad's gun in, like, a closet or something.

Eddie Fishman 52:33 I think it's actually an incredibly good analogy, right? You look at the US, like, there are all these guns everywhere.

Trevor Noah 52:37 Right. Okay.

Eddie Fishman 52:38 That's probably why we have such a ridiculous high rate of gun violence and gun deaths.

Trevor Noah 52:42 Right, and it doesn't mean that all guns are bad. It doesn't mean that all gun owners are bad, but it means that there's a higher likelihood-

Eddie Fishman 52:47 That something's gonna go wrong

Trevor Noah 52:47 ... that something will go wrong with a gun.

Eddie Fishman 52:48 I mean, how many, how many Stanislavs are we gonna have, right? I mean, you're gonna have one in every country, right? You know?

Trevor Noah 52:53 Right. It's okay.

Eddie Fishman 52:53 And, and given the stakes, right, with, with nuclear, a nuclear exchange, it's an potentially existential for humanity-

Trevor Noah 52:59 Yes

Eddie Fishman 52:59 ... or at least for, certainly for individual countries or cities, right? Um, you know, nuclear prolif- proliferation I think is a bad thing.

Eugene 53:05 I like how you've, you've also phrased it. It's not a nuclear war, it's a nuclear exchange, 'cause there won't be a war after the thing has gone off.

Trevor Noah 53:11 Yeah, there's nothing.

Eddie Fishman 53:11 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 53:11 There's nothing after that. There's nothing. Basically, nuclear war, Eugene, is like a, it's a double block on WhatsApp.

Eugene 53:18 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 53:19 That's what it is.

Eugene 53:20 I was gonna say-

Trevor Noah 53:21 It's like if you-

Eugene 53:21 ... or when people fight under the same duvet cover

Trevor Noah 53:22 ... it's when you, it's when you block me and then I block you, and then it's finished now.

Eugene 53:26 Yeah, I, I was gonna use the fart-

Trevor Noah 53:28 You were gonna go with farts?

Eugene 53:29 Yeah, 'cause there's a couple farts all together at the same time. That's-

Trevor Noah 53:32 Under the duvet?

Eugene 53:32 ... and then no one knows who did what, but the crop dusting-

Trevor Noah 53:36 No, no, no, no

Eugene 53:36 ... has happened, and then the-

Trevor Noah 53:37 But there, there can still be more conflict afterwards.

Eddie Fishman 53:39 [laughs]

Eugene 53:39 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 53:40 Have you ever crop dusted anyone?

Eugene 53:41 No. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 53:42 My daughter taught me that term.

Eddie Fishman 53:43 [laughs]

Eugene 53:43 I didn't know. What does it even mean?

Trevor Noah 53:44 You don't know what crop dusting is?

Eugene 53:45 No. Tell me. En- enlighten me.

Trevor Noah 53:47 When people are chilling at a park bench-

Eddie Fishman 53:48 Do you really want to give s-

Trevor Noah 53:49 For example-

Eddie Fishman 53:50 ... a State Department person more weapons, Eugene?

Trevor Noah 53:51 You never know when you might need this information-

Eddie Fishman 53:52 You never know when you might need it

Trevor Noah 53:53 ... in any question.

Eddie Fishman 53:54 This is truth.

Eugene 53:55 Please, yeah, yeah, no, this is, this is helpful.

Trevor Noah 53:55 When people are chilling in a park and then you just walk past, but you fart and then you go.

Eddie Fishman 53:59 Okay, yeah.

Eugene 54:00 It's the only way to do it, right?

Trevor Noah 54:01 And then you-

Eddie Fishman 54:01 You don't wanna linger

Trevor Noah 54:02 ... just look behind you and you see-

Eddie Fishman 54:02 You're not wrong, Eddie. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:03 Then you've just crop dusted. [laughs]

Eugene 54:05 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 54:05 No, wait, what is the alternative? It's like-

Trevor Noah 54:07 No, there's two-

Eddie Fishman 54:09 Yeah, 'cause it's like you wanna-

Trevor Noah 54:10 No, there's two ways to do that, Eddie

Eddie Fishman 54:11 ... right

Trevor Noah 54:11 There's one, there's one who fart, there's one who fart and hang out.

Eddie Fishman 54:13 Really?

Trevor Noah 54:14 And then everyone is looking at each other-

Eugene 54:17 It's like a power move

Trevor Noah 54:17 ... going, "What the hell?"

Eddie Fishman 54:17 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:17 Like those three Spider-Mans going ...

Eugene 54:19 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:21 Crop dusting. If I ruled the country, that would be my, my l- my number one law. Everyone who farts, you have to stand there where you farted until-

Eugene 54:28 Now you sound like Saddam Hussein's son

Trevor Noah 54:29 ... until the smell has dissipated.

Eugene 54:31 No. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:32 You must ... No, no, no, just so that ... 'Cause look, there's nothing wrong with farting. We a- we've also gotta-

Eugene 54:36 No, there's absolutely nothing wrong-

Trevor Noah 54:37 We've also gotta get rid of that in society.

Eugene 54:38 Yes.

Trevor Noah 54:39 So just stand there so that there's no blame that goes around. Stand there and put your hand up.

Eugene 54:44 [laughs] Yeah, exactly.

Trevor Noah 54:45 So if you see someone standing somewhere and they've got their hand up, you know that they farted.

Eugene 54:48 And you know the person who's guilty in a group of three or four people-

Trevor Noah 54:52 Yeah

Eugene 54:52 ... that farts-

Trevor Noah 54:53 Yes

Eugene 54:53 ... and doesn't acknowledge the fart is the one that did it

Trevor Noah 54:56 Because people who go, "What's that?" are the ones who know they didn't do anything

Eddie Fishman 54:59 I dis- I disagree. I disagree. Some people are very good at acting.

Trevor Noah 55:02 Wait, wait, wait. They-

Eddie Fishman 55:03 I've seen some people. Some people-

Trevor Noah 55:04 They dispense

Eddie Fishman 55:04 ... some people, some people fart.

Trevor Noah 55:06 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 55:06 I've seen some people.

Trevor Noah 55:07 And then the first person to go-

Eddie Fishman 55:07 And they're the ones to go, "Hmm, what is that?" And then other people go, "Aah," and then they act like-

Trevor Noah 55:15 Ah. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 55:15 That's the oldest trick in the book.

Trevor Noah 55:16 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 55:17 It's the oldest trick in the book. I'm sure there's even-

Trevor Noah 55:19 Ah

Eddie Fishman 55:19 ... I'm sure in history somewhere, people have done this on a, on a state level. What you do is you have a nuclear incident-

Trevor Noah 55:25 Right

Eddie Fishman 55:26 ... or you have something that goes wrong with-

Trevor Noah 55:27 Right

Eddie Fishman 55:27 ... like, a chemical weapon.

Trevor Noah 55:29 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 55:29 And then what you do is you go, "Uh, guys, someone released a chemical weapon. Uh, are you seeing this?" And then everyone starts-

Trevor Noah 55:35 Ah

Eddie Fishman 55:35 ... and they go like, "You were the first to discover it," but you're the ones who actually dealt it.

Trevor Noah 55:39 Or you-

Eddie Fishman 55:39 It's a trick

Trevor Noah 55:40 ... were developing a virus in a lab, and then it-

Eddie Fishman 55:42 It's a trick. It's a trick

Trevor Noah 55:43 ... it leaked, and then people were dying-

Eddie Fishman 55:44 It's a trick

Trevor Noah 55:44 ... and then you're like, "What is that?"

Eddie Fishman 55:45 Yeah, it's a trick.

Trevor Noah 55:46 One of them was whoever smelt it, dealt it?

Eddie Fishman 55:47 Yes.

Trevor Noah 55:47 And whoever denied it, fried it. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 55:51 Oh. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 55:53 Let me ask you this-

Eddie Fishman 55:54 How was this generated?

Trevor Noah 55:55 Your LinkedIn is gonna be ruined after this interview. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 55:58 Dude, my career's over now. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 56:01 Um, but we'll solve the world. I'll tell you that, Eddie. We'll solve the world. Okay, let me ask you some, uh, uh, about, like, some of the thinking that goes into the State Department or how, how world leaders try and remedy a conflict, right? Okay, Donald Trump has chosen a specific way with his people. It seems like, and, uh, this is only by reports, it seems like many of his people internally said, "Do not do this."

Eddie Fishman 56:23 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 56:23 They're like, "Yo, man, don't do this."

Eddie Fishman 56:25 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 56:25 And then he was, like, pressured by Israel, and they said, "No, there's an imminent attack," and so let's, let's start with the first part. How does the American government, or any government for that matter, determine when something can be called defend- defense versus attack?

Eddie Fishman 56:42 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 56:42 'Cause, 'cause when they go like, "It's a preemptive strike," I understand the logic behind some of it.

Eddie Fishman 56:47 Mm.

Trevor Noah 56:47 So if you're in the Wild West-

Eddie Fishman 56:48 Mm

Trevor Noah 56:49 ... and someone's about to draw, I assume you cannot wait for them to draw before you fire-

Eddie Fishman 56:53 Mm

Trevor Noah 56:53 ... because the time that it takes-

Eddie Fishman 56:55 You're dead

Trevor Noah 56:55 ... you're dead. I get, I get that. I get that, okay. So I understand the logic in, in striking preemptively to a certain extent, but then sometimes I go, how far can you take that back?

Eddie Fishman 57:06 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 57:06 Is it when the person has got their hands by their side? Is it after they've whistled? [whistles] Is it that?

Eddie Fishman 57:13 Good whistler.

Trevor Noah 57:14 Or is it the-

Eddie Fishman 57:15 Very, very good whistler

Trevor Noah 57:15 ... or is it the pacing?

Eddie Fishman 57:16 Oof.

Trevor Noah 57:16 Is it, is it after the 10 paces? Is it when they walk out of the saloon?

Eddie Fishman 57:20 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 57:20 Is it when they ride into town?

Eddie Fishman 57:22 Mm.

Trevor Noah 57:23 I- is it when you meet them in the Wild West before we get to town? How, how, how far back can you go before you say that this is now attack versus a, like, defense?

Eddie Fishman 57:32 Yeah. I mean, I think the, the, the honest truth is it's semantic, and it doesn't really matter. I mean, the president is the commander-in-chief. Uh, he or she can decide when to use military force, and there's really not much of a check on that, unfortunately. I mean, to, to your, your question, though, I mean, Donald Trump has tried to portray the strike on Iran as preemptive, right? That they were about to get a nuclear weapon, and, um, what I would say is, I mean, unless there is some classified, uh, intelligence that has not been either leaked or declassified-

Trevor Noah 58:01 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 58:01 ... which I consider pretty unlikely, 'cause you would think that if there was a smoking gun-

Trevor Noah 58:06 They would have released it. Yeah

Eddie Fishman 58:06 ... that there would be a high, a, a significant incentive for-

Trevor Noah 58:08 The incentive would be huge. Yeah

Eddie Fishman 58:09 ... the White House to say, "Hey, well, look at this."

Trevor Noah 58:10 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 58:11 Um, I do not believe that there was a preemptive reason, uh, to strike Iran. Um, you could say that, uh, they already did have, uh, 10 bombs worth of nuclear material. So in, uranium enriched to a point where you could turn it into a bomb within a week or so. Um, what I would say, though, is even now, despite this giant attack, uh, by the United States and Israel in June of 2025, Operation Midnight Hammer, that took out a lot of their nuclear facilities, plus the war that has happened, uh, in February, March, April, uh, uh, May of this year, they still have, Iran still has, uh, that, you know, uh, thousands of pounds-

Trevor Noah 58:46 That stuff

Eddie Fishman 58:46 ... of high-enriched uranium.

Trevor Noah 58:46 Even after the bunker busters-

Eddie Fishman 58:48 All of it

Trevor Noah 58:48 ... and all the jazz?

Eddie Fishman 58:49 They still got it. It's what, uh, uh, I think Trump calls a nuclear dust. Um, it is buried under this town called Isfahan in the middle of Iran, and we haven't done anything about it.

Trevor Noah 58:58 Yeah, but this is ... Okay. Again, maybe I'm naive, but if Iran had 10 bombs worth of uranium-

Eddie Fishman 59:07 Yeah

Trevor Noah 59:07 ... did not make one bomb-

Eddie Fishman 59:10 Yeah

Trevor Noah 59:10 ... never mind 10. They did not make a bomb, and then they get attacked, and you said in a week, they could make a bomb, and they-

Eddie Fishman 59:16 First threatened

Trevor Noah 59:17 ... threatened-

Eddie Fishman 59:17 Yes

Trevor Noah 59:17 ... did not make a bomb.

Eddie Fishman 59:18 Nothing.

Trevor Noah 59:19 Attacked.

Eddie Fishman 59:19 Nothing.

Trevor Noah 59:19 Did not make a bomb.

Eddie Fishman 59:21 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 59:21 Still did, do not make a bomb. Then should we not assume that they do not want to make a bomb, or is that, is that foolish?

Eddie Fishman 59:30 So I think one, one other challenge, and look, I think it's hard not to ... Well, sometimes we, we don't appreciate that societies can be complex, right?

Trevor Noah 59:37 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 59:37 And we often anthropomorphize other countries and say, like, Iran did this or that, right?

Trevor Noah 59:41 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 59:41 I think the truth is within Iran, you had different factions.

Trevor Noah 59:44 Okay.

Eddie Fishman 59:44 You had different people who said, um, "We should have a nuclear bomb," others who said, "We should at least have the capability to bu- build one quickly if we need it."

Trevor Noah 59:52 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 59:52 Actually, Ayatollah, uh, Khamenei-

Trevor Noah 59:54 Khamenei

Eddie Fishman 59:54 ... uh, the senior-

Trevor Noah 59:54 Yes

Eddie Fishman 59:54 ... the one who was killed, uh, you know, a couple months ago, uh, within an Israeli strike, he actually had put out a, a, a fatwa, sort of this dictum saying that we should never have nuclear weapons.

Trevor Noah 1:00:03 Yes. You are-

Eddie Fishman 1:00:03 And so one-

Trevor Noah 1:00:04 I did not know that. Yes

Eddie Fishman 1:00:05 ... one theory, one sort of hypothesis is that the sort of aging supreme leader, I think he was 86 when he was killed, and was, um, had terminal cancer. Um, so he's probably, um, didn't have much long to live, even had Israel not, not, uh, offed him. Um, I think there's this theory that he sort of didn't want to actually have nuclear weapons.

Trevor Noah 1:00:23 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 1:00:23 But a lot of these sort of hardline, younger-

Trevor Noah 1:00:25 Younger people. Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:00:26 ... young guns in Iran in the, uh, IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-

Trevor Noah 1:00:30 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:00:30 ... did want nukes. And so I think another sort of double irony here is that in sort of taking out the-

Trevor Noah 1:00:35 Khamenei

Eddie Fishman 1:00:35 ... yeah, Khamenei senior, they've now turned it-

Trevor Noah 1:00:36 They've now created the monster that they- You've radicalized the whole movement

Eddie Fishman 1:00:39 ... you've handed over power to people who are even more hardline than him. And I think, look, I mean, uh, I, we all, you know, I, uh, we have ... Eugene, you live in New York, but, um, we all-

Trevor Noah 1:00:49 No, he lives in South Africa

Eddie Fishman 1:00:49 ... have settled.

Trevor Noah 1:00:50 No.

Eddie Fishman 1:00:50 Okay. You're here hanging out with us.

Trevor Noah 1:00:52 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:00:52 Um, there are a lot of, look, there are a lot of- [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:00:55 Yay. Yay. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:00:59 We all live in New

Eddie Fishman 1:01:00 York. Um, there's a lot of, you know, the Iranian, uh, diaspora, you know, they're, they're, they're here, and I think there was a lot of hope in that community-

Trevor Noah 1:01:06 Yeah, a lot of people hoped for the b-

Eddie Fishman 1:01:07 ... earlier this year that, you know, this could be it. You could finally get change. 'Cause I think it's important to note, like the Islamic Republic of Iran, like they're bad guys.

Trevor Noah 1:01:14 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:01:14 You know, they killed tens of thousands of innocent protesters-

Trevor Noah 1:01:16 Yep, yep

Eddie Fishman 1:01:16 ... earlier this year. We would all be better off pr- principally Iranians if they were gone, right?

Trevor Noah 1:01:21 Yes.

Eddie Fishman 1:01:21 I think there was high hopes that, you know, there was change coming, um, when, uh, H- uh, Khamenei, uh, was sort of just gonna die from natural causes.

Trevor Noah 1:01:28 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:01:28 You have an internal debate about succession.

Trevor Noah 1:01:30 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:01:30 You might get a more liberal government. Well, guess what? The US and Israel took care of their succession problem for them.

Trevor Noah 1:01:36 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:01:36 Handed it over from Khamenei Sr. to Khamenei Jr.-

Trevor Noah 1:01:39 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:01:39 ... who seems to be a puppet of these hardline I- IRGC, uh, generals. And so I do think that, um, it's, it seemed like Ayatollah Khamenei Sr., uh, uh, you know, uh, deceased now, did not actually want to cross the nuclear threshold.

Trevor Noah 1:01:53 Right.

Eddie Fishman 1:01:53 But it's clear that they did wanna have the capability

Eddie Fishman 1:01:56 to weaponize, and now there's an even greater incentive for them to do so. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 1:02:00 Don't press anything. We've got more What Now? after this. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 1:02:12 When ... You know, and I'm obviously only asking you from the US perspective 'cause you worked in the government. I'm not, I'm not-

Eddie Fishman 1:02:19 Yeah, sure

Trevor Noah 1:02:19 ... focusing on the US, but like when a president or their trusted confidants are trying to figure out how to solve some of these most pressing issues, are there ever stories or have you ever encountered moments where a president tried to go the opposite way to the direction America seems to have always gone? So, oh, and, again, I use-

Eddie Fishman 1:02:42 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:02:42 ... I'm using broad language. Forgive me.

Eddie Fishman 1:02:44 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:02:45 But it seems like America's idea of how to solve an issue has often been send in the bombs-

Eddie Fishman 1:02:51 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:02:51 ... and things will get fixed. So how do we fix Saddam Hussein? We blow things up.

Eddie Fishman 1:02:56 Brute force.

Trevor Noah 1:02:56 And it's, it's done, and it's like, oh, no, no, now you've got ISIS. And it's like, oh, okay, that's not what we wanted. And it's like, all right, how do you fix, um, Gaddafi? Okay, you blow up Libya. It's sorted, and it's like, no, now you've got like one of the worst slave trades in-

Eddie Fishman 1:03:08 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:03:08 ... in Africa and a, a hotboding of ex- hotbed of extremism.

Trevor Noah 1:03:13 Time and time again, it feels like, you know, even, even Iran itself, it seems like America's dealing with its previous sins in helping to oust a leader that it didn't like who, for all intents and purposes, seemed like a good leader for the people. Maybe, maybe not the most perfect leader, but way better than the leaders that came afterwards. You see what I mean? Like how do you-

Eddie Fishman 1:03:31 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:03:32 ... how, how ... At, at what ... Like is there ever a point where an American leader goes, "Let's try something completely different"?

Eddie Fishman 1:03:39 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:03:40 And if they have thought that, has it worked or has it not worked?

Eddie Fishman 1:03:43 Yeah, I mean, there have certainly been examples. I would argue that, um, the original approach toward Iran, which was to not use military force, to use economic pressure to cut them off-

Trevor Noah 1:03:52 Yeah, yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:03:52 ... from this choke point that is the US dollar, originated during George W. Bush's term. I think it was frankly George W. Bush being a little bit humbled after seeing what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, right?

Trevor Noah 1:04:03 Oh, got it, got it, got it.

Eddie Fishman 1:04:03 'Cause I think there was sort of the beginning of his term, and after 9/11 particularly, a bit of a sort of rah, rah attitude toward the use of military force.

Trevor Noah 1:04:10 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 1:04:10 You know, the US kind of felt omnipotent. And then it became pretty clear after a couple years of those wars that they weren't going very well-

Trevor Noah 1:04:16 Right

Eddie Fishman 1:04:16 ... even against these quite small countries.

Trevor Noah 1:04:18 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:04:18 And so then when a country right next to Iraq that was multiple times bigger than Iraq, more powerful than Iraq-

Trevor Noah 1:04:23 Right

Eddie Fishman 1:04:24 ... namely Iran, was actually developing, uh, you know, nuclear-

Trevor Noah 1:04:27 Nuclear

Eddie Fishman 1:04:27 ... uh, weapons that, that, you know, wasn't something that, uh, uh, Saddam Hussein even was developing, which made it even more ironic, George W. Bush did s- decide to try to use non-violent pressure against Iran.

Trevor Noah 1:04:36 Right.

Eddie Fishman 1:04:37 That was the baton he passed to President Obama. There've been other decisions. I mean, look-

Trevor Noah 1:04:41 Mm

Eddie Fishman 1:04:41 ... one of the decisions that I think Obama took the most heat, uh, over was the Syria red line. If you remember when he came out-

Trevor Noah 1:04:46 Oh, yes, when

Trevor Noah 1:04:47 he said there's a red line in the ... There's a sand-

Eddie Fishman 1:04:49 Yeah, he said if-

Trevor Noah 1:04:49 ... there's a line in the sand

Eddie Fishman 1:04:49 ... if, uh, Assad uses, uh, chemical weapons-

Trevor Noah 1:04:52 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:04:52 ... um, we will, uh, attack. We will strike. And I think, um, you know, uh, basically his whole administration was gearing up, ready to bomb Syria, uh, and sort of, uh, uh, basically, uh, living up to Obama's red line.

Trevor Noah 1:05:06 Right.

Eddie Fishman 1:05:06 And then Obama sort of went for a walk, uh, in the backyard of the White House and said, "You know what? I don't wanna do this." And so there have been moments in history when, you know, presidents have sort of chosen to go the opposite way of their advisors for good and for ill.

Trevor Noah 1:05:18 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 1:05:19 And I think to your point, I mean, w- we'll see when the sort of definitive history is written on, uh, Trump's decision to attack Iran, but it does seem, uh, if you can trust, uh, some of the early reports, that Trump was sort of, uh, sort of a, a lonely voice, uh, in terms of wanting-

Trevor Noah 1:05:32 Hm

Eddie Fishman 1:05:32 ... to strike Iran in February of this year.

Trevor Noah 1:05:35 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:05:35 Um, and, and unfortunately his voice is the one that, that actually mattered.

Trevor Noah 1:05:39 Ha- has there ever been a case of the US ... 'Cause you see, you, you showed us or you just described two, two possible outcomes, but they seem to be, uh, you know, completely diametrically opposed. Like one is like go in and blow the thing up or ignore it completely.

Eddie Fishman 1:05:55 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:05:56 Have there been any instances where the US has tried to bring the other person in? And what I mean by this is like I'm, I'm sure you've seen this because of the, the, the world you've been in. Many people will argue that part of the reason the world has the Russia that it has today-

Eddie Fishman 1:06:12 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:06:13 ... is because the US did a terrible job of bringing Russia into the fold post-World War II-

Eddie Fishman 1:06:19 NATO

Trevor Noah 1:06:19 ... in and around NATO-

Eddie Fishman 1:06:20 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:06:20 ... the Cold War. The, the Americans just didn't do a good job of being like, "Hey, join us."

Eddie Fishman 1:06:24 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:06:24 "Actually, you're part of this G..." You know what I mean? "You're part of the G20. You're part of this, so come in. Come on. You're part of this. You, you actually ... Have a McDonald's. Let's do this thing."

Eddie Fishman 1:06:32 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:06:32 You know what I mean?

Eddie Fishman 1:06:33 So on Russia, I mean, it's something that's a issue near and dear to my heart. I actually, um, sort of was, uh, very interested in Russian history, uh, Russian literature. My, uh, great-grandparents emigrated to the United States from the former, uh, Russian Empire.

Trevor Noah 1:06:46 Oh, wow.

Eddie Fishman 1:06:46 And, you know, spent a summer, uh, when I was in college living in Russia, uh, sort of before-

Trevor Noah 1:06:50 Hm

Eddie Fishman 1:06:50 ... our relationship has gone sideways. I've now, by the way, been sanctioned by Russia, so I can never go back unfortunately.

Trevor Noah 1:06:55 Oh, sorry.

Eddie Fishman 1:06:55 Um, which by the way, I appreciate that. When, when I was sanctioned in 2022, a lot of people sent me these like congratulatory notes and-

Trevor Noah 1:07:00 No, no, no

Eddie Fishman 1:07:01 ... and I was like-

Trevor Noah 1:07:01 Anyone losing a piece of their home-

Eddie Fishman 1:07:03 Whoa, whoa, whoa

Trevor Noah 1:07:03 ... yeah, man.

Eddie Fishman 1:07:03 And so I was like, hold on a second, like this is upsetting. You know, it's like weird when a place where you've had friends, where you've spent good times, um-

Trevor Noah 1:07:10 It's taken away from you

Eddie Fishman 1:07:11 ... is taken away from you. So, so look, I, I do think that US policy toward Russia in the '90s could have been significantly better, right? We could have given Russia more of a bear hug, uh, than we did, right? If you look at, you sort of juxtapose Russia with some of the other former communist countries-

Trevor Noah 1:07:29 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:07:29 ... like Poland or Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary. I mean, all of those countries have generally become successful, uh, free societies.

Trevor Noah 1:07:37 Yeah. Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:07:38 You know, liberal, uh, democracies. Even Hungary, right, where it was sort of going in the, uh, in the wrong direction for a long time.

Trevor Noah 1:07:44 But still.

Eddie Fishman 1:07:44 They now got rid of Orbán, and they're sort of back in the, in the fold. I do think we could have done a better job, uh, uh, in the 1990s, but look, I, I think there's also, um, an element of just bad luck and historical contingency.

Trevor Noah 1:07:57 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:07:57 Um, uh, you know, sort of the, the main successful Russian politician that a lot of people thought was going to succeed Boris Yeltsin, who, you know, sort of famously kind of a drunk, uh, not a particularly effective leader-

Trevor Noah 1:08:09 Which was?

Eddie Fishman 1:08:10 ... was this guy, uh, Boris Nemtsov.

Trevor Noah 1:08:11 Oh, yes.

Eddie Fishman 1:08:12 Um, he was a very handsome sort of reformer, and, um, Yeltsin, when he was sort of like, you know, like very clearly very sick and dying, he was like, "Who can I put in as my successor that's just not going to like prosecute my family for corruption-

Trevor Noah 1:08:27 Mm

Eddie Fishman 1:08:27 ... and like take away our resources?" And so he elevated this relatively unknown deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin-

Trevor Noah 1:08:35 Mm

Eddie Fishman 1:08:36 ... into so sort of, uh, the Kremlin to be his sort of handpicked successor.

Trevor Noah 1:08:39 Wow.

Eddie Fishman 1:08:39 And so Putin inherited the presidency from Yeltsin. He eventually won, you know, uh, you know, an, an election, but he in- inherited the ele- uh, the presidency at the end-

Trevor Noah 1:08:47 Mm

Eddie Fishman 1:08:47 ... of 1999 from Yeltsin because Yeltsin was like, "This is sort of, you know, the, the most innocuous successor." But like if you think about it, had that not happened, right, if you had had, if you just had a free and fair election this, and before Putin had come in in sort of that role-

Trevor Noah 1:09:01 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:09:01 ... you probably would've gotten a guy like Nemtsov. Um, the other thing I'll say too just to give, you know, some folks in the US government a little bit of credit here, 'cause I, I do think we could have done better policies, and I can talk about those, but, you know, we did bring Russia ... You said, you mentioned the, the, the G-se- uh, G20. You know, we have this G7, which is sort of like the close club of US allies.

Trevor Noah 1:09:20 Oh, yeah, the G7. Sorry. Yes.

Eddie Fishman 1:09:21 We did make the G8, right?

Trevor Noah 1:09:22 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:09:22 We, we brought them into the G8, and we brought r- uh, Russia into the World Trade Organization. And actually, um, I, uh, part of the reason I was sanctioned, uh, by Russia, in 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, I was the Russia sanctions lead at the State Department. So I was the one designing-

Trevor Noah 1:09:38 Mm

Eddie Fishman 1:09:39 ... the sanctions and negotiating them with the EU and the G7 to try to put sanctions on Russia-

Trevor Noah 1:09:43 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:09:43 ... back in 2014. And I remember at the State Department, my, a lot of my colleagues were like very against sanctioning Russia, and I think it was because they had just got Russia into the World Trade Organization like 18 months before.

Trevor Noah 1:09:56 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 1:09:56 And many of them, like career diplomats, had spent like a decade of their lives-

Trevor Noah 1:10:00 Trying to make this happen

Eddie Fishman 1:10:01 ... on the ground in Russia.

Trevor Noah 1:10:02 Make this happen, yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:10:02 ... working with them to like make sure that their laws were right and, you know, getting in place so they could join the World Trade Organization, and then like 18 months after, like the big project of their careers had culminated-

Trevor Noah 1:10:12 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:10:12 ... where like actually we're sanctioning Russia. And so there was a lot of like blood, sweat, and tears poured out, uh, to, by US, uh, diplomats to try to bring Russia into the fold. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, I think unfortunately history just didn't go our way.

Trevor Noah 1:10:28 One of the things I've always wondered for, for people who work in, in your position or any position adjacent to it in a government is how much of yourself you have to keep and how much of your patriotism has to take over. Because I, I can only imagine it's, it's, it's, it's a really complicated situation, right? On the one hand, you have your views as a human being. On the other hand, the country has its views, and because you are of the country, you're meant to adopt some of, if not all of those views. But at times, your country's doing something wrong.

Eddie Fishman 1:11:04 Yep.

Trevor Noah 1:11:06 How do you then find the, the, the gap between yourself and the country without being seen? You know, because people will be quick to say, "You're a traitor," or, you know, "It's treason," but it's like yeah, but countries can do things wrong, as in like administrations or ...

Eddie Fishman 1:11:20 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:11:21 And we've seen people who will fight against their own country, or they will, like from within the ranks, they will, there'll be a certain level of dissent, not physical fight.

Eddie Fishman 1:11:27 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:11:27 But they'll go, "No, I don't think this is right. We must change this." And when it is changed, we'll go, "Oh, thank you for changing it."

Eddie Fishman 1:11:33 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:11:34 But if it doesn't get changed, that person will get punished-

Eddie Fishman 1:11:36 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:11:36 ... for trying to change it. How, how do you, how do you grapple with that?

Eddie Fishman 1:11:40 Yeah. Look, I think e- it's, it, each individual has their own-

Trevor Noah 1:11:44 Moral compass

Eddie Fishman 1:11:44 ... uh, perspective, their own moral compass. I think it's interesting 'cause f- for me, I think I would have a lot of trouble serving in an administration whose policies I disagreed with.

Trevor Noah 1:11:54 Okay. Okay.

Eddie Fishman 1:11:54 And frankly, just to be totally candid, um, you know, I was a career diplomat at the State Department. I could have theoretically stayed and worked through the first Trump administration, um, and I decided-

Trevor Noah 1:12:04 Okay

Eddie Fishman 1:12:04 ... not to, um, and in large part because, you know, I, I really did believe that what Russia was doing in Ukraine was morally objectionable, morally abhorrent. They were literally conquering their neighboring territory or a neighboring country.

Trevor Noah 1:12:19 Right.

Eddie Fishman 1:12:19 Right? Um, which is not something that I think many of us ever expected to see again in our lifetime, right? Something like that had not happened since World War II, right? An actual military conquest occurring, uh, on European soil, and then you had Trump elected in 2016 with, you know, the Russian government actively assisting. Um, I'm not saying that Trump, uh, was colluding.

Trevor Noah 1:12:42 No, no, not that he accepted. Yeah, not that he accepted.

Eddie Fishman 1:12:43 But, but certainly, I mean-

Trevor Noah 1:12:44 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:12:44 ... you know, the, the, the Russian government did put its thumb, uh, on the scale. And then you had, I think in the, the beginning of the first Trump administration, um, a real effort to say, "Well, maybe we should just excuse all of Russia's sins. We should, uh, you know, let them have Ukraine." And that was not something I wanted to be a part of, and so that was a big reason why I decided to leave the government. At the same time, when I look at friends and colleagues who have stayed around, I'm extremely grateful, right?

Trevor Noah 1:13:12 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:13:12 I'm grateful. Um, and, and-

Trevor Noah 1:13:14 'Cause they're a bulwark in many ways.

Eddie Fishman 1:13:15 And, and it's not even that. Uh, uh, you know, 'cause I, I think a lot of them like, you know ... It's hard, I think during Trump's first term you w- you did see, you know, and, and Trump gets mad about this, right?

Trevor Noah 1:13:23 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:13:23 That he is sort of the deep state-

Trevor Noah 1:13:24 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:13:24 ... was fighting against him. But I mean, even if you're not necessarily a bulwark, like I think having ... ... intelligent people in the room who have some experience, who can sort of at l- you know, at the very least put their, their views out there, I think is so important.

Trevor Noah 1:13:38 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:13:38 Um, and look, I think in the, one of the, the things that has done Trump a disservice in his second term-

Trevor Noah 1:13:44 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:13:45 ... is he does not have a high caliber of cabinet or advisors around him. He has a lot of people who really should not be anywhere near making decisions. There are a few people there I think are quite, they're good-

Trevor Noah 1:13:57 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:13:57 ... they're credible, but it's a much, much lower caliber than he had in his first term.

Trevor Noah 1:14:01 Mm.

Eddie Fishman 1:14:01 And I think that's part of the reason you've had, frankly, a less successful, uh, policy.

Trevor Noah 1:14:06 How do you, how do you think we find the balance between having expertise and getting stuck in an old way of doing things? Uh, I ask this because I, I remember hearing one story about how, um, when the Trump administration came into power first time around, he just told people around him to make calls.

Eddie Fishman 1:14:27 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:14:27 He was just like i- almost on, like, a childlike level.

Eddie Fishman 1:14:31 Yeah, like, "You know what's best. Go ahead."

Trevor Noah 1:14:33 Not even. He was like, "Uh, what's happening in South Africa? All right, Eugene, aren't you South Af- phone South Africa."

Eddie Fishman 1:14:38 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:14:38 And then it was like, "Rudy Giuliani. Isn't that Italian? Phone Italy."

Eddie Fishman 1:14:42 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:14:42 And like, literally-

Eddie Fishman 1:14:43 No way

Trevor Noah 1:14:43 ... I'm, I'm saying it in a very comical way, but apparently it was close to this. He just went, "Hey, man, do you know, you know something. As- didn't you go there once? Phone them. You, phone them. You ph-" And people were just using, like, their normal phones.

Eddie Fishman 1:14:55 No way.

Trevor Noah 1:14:56 That's how the story, like, sort of first leaked out-

Eddie Fishman 1:14:58 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:14:58 ... is that people were conducting state business on-

Eddie Fishman 1:15:00 On their-

Trevor Noah 1:15:01 ... on, what do they call, unsecured devices-

Eddie Fishman 1:15:03 Yeah, unsecured lines, yeah

Trevor Noah 1:15:03 ... and people were just phoning. But, and this is completely an, a, a story that I've heard, so I, I cannot fact-check it or verify it. But apparently, that was one of the reasons that the, like, the Saudis and the, I think the, the Emiratis were able to even, like, get to the table-

Eddie Fishman 1:15:21 Intercede calls

Trevor Noah 1:15:21 ... No, get to the table-

Eddie Fishman 1:15:23 Oh

Trevor Noah 1:15:23 ... having a conversation, was because Jared Kushner just didn't, like, know the stuff, and he was like, "Well, uh, why don't you wanna talk to them?" And they were like, "What are you talking about? We're not gonna..." And he's like, "Well, uh, why don't you talk to him?" And then he was like, "Yeah, I'll phone him, and you just talk to him," and then the one person just talks to the other one on the phone, and they made progress that they, they otherwise would have never made if it had been contained within, like, the-

Eddie Fishman 1:15:42 The diplomatic channels of old

Trevor Noah 1:15:43 ... Yeah, the static,

Trevor Noah 1:15:45 you know?

Eddie Fishman 1:15:45 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:15:46 Even things like, um, which country you phone first.

Eddie Fishman 1:15:49 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:15:49 I remember hearing many world leaders were frustrated with Biden's administration because they felt like there was no, there was no reaching out. There was no communication. There was no... And then Biden's team would say, "No, we're very, we're choosing very carefully who we will call first."

Eddie Fishman 1:16:08 Protocol.

Trevor Noah 1:16:09 Because it's protocol, right? Which country we reach out to first. Apparently, bro, as soon as Trump came into power-

Eddie Fishman 1:16:15 WhatsApp

Trevor Noah 1:16:15 ... every country was phoned. Like, and I, when I say every country, I mean every... If you knew a country, the person, their job was just to phone someone there, and just ask someone who asks someone who asks someone who asks someone. And then you would even, like, phone Trump's phone directly. It was-

Eddie Fishman 1:16:30 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:16:31 ... it was in many ways chaotic. I don't deny this. But it did give us an insight into the fact that some of the ways that we do things are a little so stiff-

Eddie Fishman 1:16:42 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:16:43 ... you know?

Eddie Fishman 1:16:43 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:16:44 ... and staid that, like, it holds us back. So how do, you know what I mean? How do we find that balance between the diplomatic protocols versus new ways to w- maybe make progress with countries that we disagree with?

Eddie Fishman 1:16:55 I, I couldn't agree more. I think that, you know, I, in the process of, of writing Choke Points, I spoke to 30 or 40 people who were in the first Trump administration.

Trevor Noah 1:17:04 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:17:04 And one thing I heard consistently was a feeling that it was actually exciting because there was a, a tolerance of risk. There was allowing people to sort of freelance a little bit more than you did. You know, in the Obama administration it was extremely sort of, uh, you know, orderly and-

Trevor Noah 1:17:17 Yeah, as Rahm mentioned, yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:17:19 ... meaty, but then, you know, the process, uh, you know, was, was followed to a T. Um, and so I do think there's, there's something to that, right? And I, I think particularly also with diplomacy, like, it is helpful, frankly, to build rapport with other people-

Trevor Noah 1:17:31 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:17:31 ... to have a relationship where people can just c-

Trevor Noah 1:17:34 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:17:34 ... pick up the phone and call you.

Trevor Noah 1:17:35 Yeah, yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:17:35 I mean, in my own experience, a lot of the, the progress I personally made was through-

Trevor Noah 1:17:40 Personal-

Eddie Fishman 1:17:40 ... personal relationships-

Trevor Noah 1:17:41 Yeah, there you go

Eddie Fishman 1:17:41 ... and trusting relationships. So I think there's something there. I think when it comes to expertise, though, I don't think there's really a substitute for it. Like, I, I do think you, you do want people in the room who at least know something about the country you're talking to or about, right? You understand-

Trevor Noah 1:17:57 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:17:58 ... uh, their history. You-

Trevor Noah 1:17:59 Culture

Eddie Fishman 1:17:59 ... you know some people there, their culture, maybe you've spent time there. And certainly, like, when you're talking about the uses of power-

Trevor Noah 1:18:06 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:18:07 ... economic warfare, you should probably understand, like, well, what might happen if we were gonna sanction the central bank of Russia?

Trevor Noah 1:18:13 Right. Okay.

Eddie Fishman 1:18:14 Could that cause a financial crisis in Germany? What would that mean for us, right? Like, what would happen if you attack Iran? Would they cut off access to the Strait of Hormuz? Could they do that? What would that do to oil prices? What would that do to fertilizer? How about could we have a famine in part of Africa, right?

Trevor Noah 1:18:27 Right, okay.

Eddie Fishman 1:18:27 Because, like, and those are subjects that you need some level of knowledge.

Trevor Noah 1:18:33 That's what she's, yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:18:33 Um, so I think at the same time, like, I don't, having some sort of an ossified class of experts I also think is not good either. Like, I think you should have people changing seats at, at the table. I think Biden, uh, President Biden, by and large, took a lot of the senior people from the Obama administration and just, like, shuffled their chairs.

Trevor Noah 1:18:53 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:18:53 And I don't think that did him much service, frankly. I think, like, having some of those people back, for sure, right? Very good people. But also injecting some new ideas, some-

Trevor Noah 1:19:03 Oh

Eddie Fishman 1:19:03 ... you know, fresh perspectives I think is really important.

Trevor Noah 1:19:05 In a way I think of it, it's, it's sort of like, it's sort of like football in a way, is you have some football teams, soccer, some, some teams where the coach moves every single player on the, on the pitch like a chessboard, and the team can become so stiff that they can't respond dynamically to changes in the game plan.

Eddie Fishman 1:19:25 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:19:26 And then you have other coaches who don't have a game plan, and then that's chaos. But then you have coaches who go, "I spend all my time picking the right players and putting them in the right positions, and then I trust that when it's game time-

Eddie Fishman 1:19:37 They'll do what they need to

Trevor Noah 1:19:37 ... everyone will know what they need to do."

Eddie Fishman 1:19:39 Yep.

Trevor Noah 1:19:39 And in a way, it's like, I feel like that could be, like, a perfect balance, is you find experts because they've taken the time- To become experts in these fields, but you also give them a little latitude to say, "Hey, go out there, make friends, make decisions, move the ball-"

Eugene 1:19:52 Totally

Trevor Noah 1:19:53 ... like, like switch things. 'Cause I, I just think we take for granted how much the small interpersonal relations shape the big geopolitical relations.

Eugene 1:20:04 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:20:04 You know?

Eugene 1:20:04 Yeah, the big picture.

Trevor Noah 1:20:05 One of the saddest stories I ever, uh, saw was the story of how the, um, Israel-Palestine negotiations essentially didn't come together and then did just because Clinton forced the two leaders to be in the same room.

Eugene 1:20:25 Really?

Trevor Noah 1:20:26 They didn't even wanna talk to each other. It was like straight up like, "I don't want to talk to them and they don't wanna talk to me. We're enemies. This is this." And Clinton said, "You're gonna sit in the same room." And he did it arguably for selfish reasons, but in a good way. He was like, "I'm going to solve this issue."

Eugene 1:20:40 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:20:41 "You're gonna sit in the same room." And he was like, "Neither of you wants me as your enemy. We're gonna sit in this room and we're gonna g-". And they didn't, they refused to speak to each other. For a long time, they just didn't speak to each other, they didn't speak to each other, they didn't speak to each other. And they would have meals and everyone would meet up and... But they... And then one day, one day, the story goes, one of them just turns to the other and was like, "How's your family?" Literally. The Palestinian leader-

Eugene 1:21:05 No way

Trevor Noah 1:21:05 ... the Israeli. Yeah. One of them just turned to the other and said, "How's your family?" And the conversation evolved, and the convers- And then the next time they spoke more, and the next. And they never spoke about the actual issues-

Eugene 1:21:15 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:21:15 ... each time, each subsequent meeting. And then one day one said to the other, "Do you actually wanna get into, do you wanna discuss this?" And that's when they made the most inroads.

Eugene 1:21:26 No.

Trevor Noah 1:21:27 That's when they made the mo- Yeah. Until that suicide bombing that happened-

Eugene 1:21:31 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:21:31 ... it looked like there was a path to a two-state solution. It looked like there was a moment in time where Israel-Palestine wasn't gonna be what it is today. But the biggest breakthrough for me came in the fact that two human beings-

Eugene 1:21:43 Mm, interpersonal relation

Trevor Noah 1:21:45 ... two human beings saw each other as human beings and no longer as, like, a country's name, and because of that they began the journey. And, like, it got ripped away from the world, I argue. But I even think about that when we, when we use, like, words like the Russians.

Eugene 1:22:00 Yeah, totally.

Trevor Noah 1:22:01 I'm a little sad sometimes because I go, "I have nothing against Russians."

Eugene 1:22:04 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:22:06 I've been to Russia. I went there for the World Cup. I've met Russians everywhere in the world. Russian people, f- forget what they've given us in the world, like, you know, art and, and ballet and math, and ch- like, lots of things, but as human beings, yo, man, Russians are some of my favorite people I've ever, ever, ever met.

Eugene 1:22:22 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:22:23 But then we say the Russians as shorthand for the Russian government.

Eugene 1:22:26 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:22:26 And I think what we do is we create the perfect propaganda for the Russian government to use on its citizens to say, "Look, the whole world hates us."

Eugene 1:22:34 Yep.

Trevor Noah 1:22:35 And it's like, no, no, no, actually we

Trevor Noah 1:22:37 have nothing against the Russians. We have an issue with Vladimir Putin's government. Does that make sense?

Eugene 1:22:42 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:22:43 And I, I sometimes, like, that's why people are like, "Hey, congrats, you got banned from Russia," and they're happy for you 'cause they don't realize that you knew human beings there.

Eugene 1:22:51 Totally.

Trevor Noah 1:22:53 They think, they think that you're cut off from the government, but you didn't lose the government. You lost humans, you lost friends, you lost family members, you lost your history, you lost your culture. And that's, that's the thing that I think we forget sometimes when we're having these, like, geopolitical disputes in the world, is even when people are like, "The Iranians," eh, man, I know people from Iran. Some of the most fun you'll ever... Like-

Eugene 1:23:12 Totally

Trevor Noah 1:23:12 ... amazing human beings, you know what I mean?

Eugene 1:23:14 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:23:15 But we then go, "The Iranians," and it's like, no, bruh. I wish we were more specific about, like, the country and that administration in particular. The same way no American wants to be tarnished by the Bush years. They call them the Bush years in particular.

Eugene 1:23:30 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:23:31 If you say to an American, "Oh, man-

Eugene 1:23:32 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:23:32 ... what you guys were doing in Iraq," they're like, "Oh, yeah, the Bush years." Then you're like, "Oh, the American years."

Eugene 1:23:37 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:23:38 Americans will be like, "No, no, those were the Bush years," because they wanna separate themselves and America from that moment. You, you get what I'm saying?

Eugene 1:23:45 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:23:46 Like, I, I don't know. I feel like there's like, there's like a world where we could try and, like, stitch the interpersonal just a little bit more.

Eugene 1:23:52 It almost feels like, um, the propaganda machine needed a villain all the time.

Trevor Noah 1:23:59 Oh, definitely.

Eugene 1:24:00 So, uh, I think when you look at the... I, I, I love, I love reading about the Vietnam War. When you look at the Vietnam War, there was no really, there was not really a, a, a villain that the Americans can look at in Vietnam. There was no name in Vietnam that people could say. Vietnam started becoming synonymous with the war that never ended, but there was no human being.

Trevor Noah 1:24:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You couldn't find the person.

Eugene 1:24:21 Right? But then when Iraq happened, then there was Saddam Hussein.

Trevor Noah 1:24:24 Yeah.

Eugene 1:24:24 There was, there was branding.

Trevor Noah 1:24:25 Yeah.

Eugene 1:24:25 Uh, when 9/11 happened, there was Osama bin Laden.

Trevor Noah 1:24:28 Uh-huh.

Eugene 1:24:28 You know? And obviously Africa becomes synonymous with dictatorships. So but when you point the camera or the lens back at America and go, "You could be going through a dictatorship yourself," or Europe, and you go, "This is the same what Idi Amin used to do to people, not wanting to be voted out, elections that are prolonged, interference and whatsoever," then it becomes difficult for people to, to kind of ingest in their own country because it has become synonymous with something that happens over there.

Trevor Noah 1:24:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eugene 1:24:55 Right?

Trevor Noah 1:24:55 It become, it becomes apart from the

Trevor Noah 1:24:57 thing. I, I even wonder, actually, maybe, maybe you're best positioned to speak to this. Do you ever wonder if-

Eugene 1:25:03 Not me

Trevor Noah 1:25:03 ... No, no, no, no. W- did you ever work in a state department?

Eugene 1:25:05 I said this one. Now you can take it. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:25:06 You've worked in departments.

Eugene 1:25:07 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:25:07 But not at the states.

Eugene 1:25:08 Department stores. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:25:09 Department stores.

Eugene 1:25:11 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:25:11 The, the, the vegetable department.

Eugene 1:25:14 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:25:17 [laughs] Many departments, this guy.

Eugene 1:25:19 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:25:19 Traffic department.

Eugene 1:25:21 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:25:21 Hey, Eugene, many departments, not the state department. Do you ever wonder if America's propaganda has been too good?

Eugene 1:25:31 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:25:31 And what I mean by that is, is it possible that America's propaganda was so good, at a time when I argue it needed to be. Every country uses propaganda, so no judgment. This is just us looking at it as objectively as possible. Is it possible that America's propaganda was so good- That it bred a generation of people who now

Trevor Noah 1:25:50 had a complete inability to create new ideas of other countries because of the propaganda that, that they'd been fed. And I'll, I'll tell you where I bring this from. When you look at the Cold War and Russia and the US, it is fascinating to me that after, you know, World War II, the two nuclear bombs are dropped by the United States. The allied forces panic, go, "What the hell has happened here? We didn't ... As you said, it was a secret. We didn't know you guys had this bomb. What the hell is this?"

Eddie Fishman 1:26:20 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:26:21 America goes, "Calm down, we've got, we've got the bomb. We'll protect you." The world's like, "We- we're not comfortable with this. This is scary," right? Everyone starts to panic. Russia then says, "America has this bomb, and we don't like that they're the only ones who have it. Maybe we should also try and make one." They then posture as if they sort of have a weapon, but they don't.

Eddie Fishman 1:26:44 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:26:45 America then says, "Russia has a bomb." They then start acting like Russia has a bomb. Russia then goes like, "Yeah, yeah, we might have a bomb." America acts more like Russia has a bomb, and then they push Russia to have a bomb. And, and I'm not saying they forced Russia or you, you know what I mean. I'm not, I'm not simplifying it to that extent. But it feels like the, the, the, the, the idea that you can have of another country can be so powerful that even subsequent generations who didn't realize that it was propaganda, you know, watching cartoons like Popeye or Superman or any of these, when you get into government, you're like, "I don't trust the Russians."

Eddie Fishman 1:27:22 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:27:23 Why don't you trust them?

Eddie Fishman 1:27:23 Spy movies.

Trevor Noah 1:27:24 Yeah, but why don't you trust them?

Eddie Fishman 1:27:25 The KGB.

Trevor Noah 1:27:26 'Cause from the time you were a kid-

Eddie Fishman 1:27:27 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:27:28 ... you were taught not to trust the Russians-

Eddie Fishman 1:27:30 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:27:30 ... as a whole. I'm not saying you should just trust Russia, the country, or the, the administration, but do you ever wonder if, like, that propaganda is so powerful that it has limited America's ability to see beyond its own propaganda that it created?

Eddie Fishman 1:27:43 Yeah, I mean, I think also, you know, the United States, despite the fact that we are and have been for a long time the world's most powerful country, we underwrite all of these international institutions. We've had sort of, uh, embassies all over the world. Our pop culture, as you say, is all over the world.

Trevor Noah 1:28:00 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:28:00 We are relatively geographically isolated, and the vast majority of Americans don't travel overseas. They don't live in cities like New York, where you have plenty of friends who are Russian or Iranian.

Trevor Noah 1:28:10 Yeah, yeah, anyone can walk by. Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:28:12 Yeah, so it's very easy to caricature, uh, other, you know, people from other countries.

Trevor Noah 1:28:17 Hmm.

Eddie Fishman 1:28:17 And I think that oftentimes does us a disservice in foreign policy.

Trevor Noah 1:28:21 Yeah, 'cause it just limits your ability to ... Like, I, I don't know how you negotiate with somebody if you don't see somebody to negotiate with, is what I mean.

Eddie Fishman 1:28:31 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:28:32 How, how do you even begin that conversation? What do you ... You know? You just give them a broad label, and then, and then you bomb away, and then you hope for the best.

Eddie Fishman 1:28:39 Yeah. T- treat them like Uber Eats delivery guys.

Trevor Noah 1:28:42 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:28:42 Take your goods and wish them well.

Eugene 1:28:44 Eddie, what, what, what-

Trevor Noah 1:28:45 That is definitely one way to think of it. [laughs]

Eugene 1:28:47 [laughs] Is that what you do?

Trevor Noah 1:28:48 You just invite them in and, you know? [laughs]

Eugene 1:28:50 Oh, really, Eddie? Tell us more.

Trevor Noah 1:28:51 Hit me with the fire. [laughs]

Eugene 1:28:53 Eddie's like, "I'm sure you're wondering who the second set of fries were for."

Eddie Fishman 1:28:56 You are a really unfriendly guy, Eugene.

Eugene 1:28:58 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:28:58 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:28:58 Whoo. Did you ... Can you believe he does that with the Uber Eats guy? Goodness.

Eugene 1:29:02 If I was a delivery man, this would be a day my shift would end, right?

Eddie Fishman 1:29:04 Yeah. Whoa.

Eugene 1:29:04 I would be like-

Eddie Fishman 1:29:05 That's rough, man

Eugene 1:29:06 ... "Yeah, man."

Trevor Noah 1:29:07 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:29:08 Um, but look, I mean, ho- honestly, you know, it's, it's ... I, I wrote a book about economic warfare, one, been traveling the world talking about it, and h- honestly, something I never expected, one of the countries where there's the most interest in economic warfare and choke points, where I've been going routinely over the last year plus, is Canada. Because the Canadians are like, "What is going on in the United States?"

Trevor Noah 1:29:30 Wow.

Eddie Fishman 1:29:31 "Why are you hitting us with these massive tariffs? Why are you threatening to make us the 51st state?" And I, and I go there and, and people are ... They're looking at us, and sort of to your point of, like, you know, Bush era America-

Trevor Noah 1:29:42 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:29:42 ... they're like, "Are you the enemy?" And I-

Trevor Noah 1:29:44 Mm

Eddie Fishman 1:29:44 ... and, and oftentimes the message I have there is, like, hold, hold on. No, like, we are still-

Eugene 1:29:48 We're good

Eddie Fishman 1:29:49 ... effectively-

Trevor Noah 1:29:50 Damn

Eddie Fishman 1:29:50 ... the same, you know, cultural ... And, and ultimately I am still very bullish on US-Canadian relations over the long term. But, you know, even very cosmopolitan, powerful people in Canada are, like, reassessing whether they can trust the United States, and I think that's because, you know, if you're in a place and all you really do is consume another country by virtue of what their political leader is saying, which by the way, is now how a lot of the world is consuming the United States, right?

Trevor Noah 1:30:18 Right, right, right.

Eddie Fishman 1:30:18 It's no longer, you know, Michael Jordan and the Backstreet Boys or whoever. You know, like, the '90s, right?

Trevor Noah 1:30:23 It's Donald Trump.

Eddie Fishman 1:30:24 It's like Donald Trump, like, is, like, the, you know, like, the avatar of the United States. I think it, it has changed a lot of perceptions. I mean, even ... I, I don't know if you've had this experience. Like, when I've been, uh, to Europe, uh, in the last couple years, or sorry, I guess the last year and a half since Trump came back, like, a lot of my friends, like, we'll be having dinner in, like, Berlin or something, and they'll be like, "Are you okay?"

Trevor Noah 1:30:45 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:30:45 And I'm like ... And it's because, like, they're just, like, their only notion of-

Trevor Noah 1:30:49 Yes

Eddie Fishman 1:30:49 ... American life right now-

Trevor Noah 1:30:50 Yes

Eddie Fishman 1:30:50 ... is, like, seeing what's on the TV-

Eugene 1:30:51 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:30:51 ... which looks so chaotic. And, like, l- little do they know, like, you can walk around the West Village or Soho or Brooklyn and be like, "Hold on."

Trevor Noah 1:30:59 Or even Cleveland, Ohio-

Eddie Fishman 1:31:00 Yeah, anywhere

Trevor Noah 1:31:01 ... or like Oklahoma, or you name it, like, you know?

Eddie Fishman 1:31:03 Yeah. And, and, like, maybe in a way that's also troubling, in that, like, your society can be taking a really dark turn when on a, like, an individual level-

Trevor Noah 1:31:11 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:31:11 ... and, like, a family level you don't really experience it.

Trevor Noah 1:31:14 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:31:14 Um, but yeah, it's, uh, it, it is sort of like a, a mind-bending experience when you see how even people who are very culturally similar to you, who are your friends in other countries-

Trevor Noah 1:31:24 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:31:24 ... are perceiving the United States in this moment.

Eugene 1:31:26 Who you'd expect to know better, in fact. Yeah. So you can imagine what the other people think.

Trevor Noah 1:31:30 It almost makes me wonder, just hearing you say that, if America was seeing America doing what America's doing, what would it do to America?

Eddie Fishman 1:31:40 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 1:31:41 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:31:41 Like, literally, if, if America was witnessing the United States doing what it's doing now-

Eugene 1:31:47 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:31:47 ... would it impose sanctions on it? Would it i- invade it?

Eugene 1:31:52 Regime change?

Trevor Noah 1:31:52 Would it push for a regime change? Would it- You know, that's a, it's a, it's an interesting way to think of it because if your allies are saying to you, "You are not yourself," it's almost the same as your friends calling you in for an intervention to be like, "Hey-

Eddie Fishman 1:32:05 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:32:06 ... you're not the person we knew you to be."

Eddie Fishman 1:32:08 Yeah. No, I th- I think that's right. And look, I mean, in,

Eddie Fishman 1:32:14 in some ways, Donald Trump, at least when it comes to economic warfare, is part of a consistent trend where every US president in the 21st century, from Bush to Obama to Trump's first term to Joe Biden to Trump second term has imposed sanctions at twice the rate of their predecessor.

Trevor Noah 1:32:34 Really? Hmm.

Eddie Fishman 1:32:34 So you've seen an exponential rise in the use of economic warfare across party lines. So in one sense we should appreciate that he is sort of part of this trend. At the, on the other hand, you know, previous presidents, including Trump during his first term, when they were using economic warfare it was against Russia and Iran and North Korea and China. Um, it was, it was a small group of countries that, for better or for worse, a lot of Americans view as sort of these pariah states.

Trevor Noah 1:33:00 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:33:00 Right? Trump, during his second term, has waged economic warfare not just against those countries, but against Canada, against Mexico, against India, against Japan, against the entire world.

Trevor Noah 1:33:12 At some point threatened Lesotho.

Eddie Fishman 1:33:13 Right. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:33:13 I mean, who does that?

Eddie Fishman 1:33:14 Right.

Trevor Noah 1:33:15 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:33:15 He did, right? I mean, like they, they got hit with tariffs.

Trevor Noah 1:33:17 Yeah. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:33:18 On Liberation Day. They've already been surrounded by South Africa, guys.

Trevor Noah 1:33:21 Yeah, right. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:33:21 I mean, what are-

Trevor Noah 1:33:22 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:33:23 Yeah. Talk about a choke point, right?

Trevor Noah 1:33:25 Yeah. [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:33:25 That's a real choke point. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:33:27 [laughs] They're surrounding us.

Eddie Fishman 1:33:29 [laughs] Yeah. No. So I mean, like that, yeah, I mean, that, that's not normal behavior, and I think it does have really long-term consequences for the United States because-

Trevor Noah 1:33:40 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:33:40 ... I mean, if you go, y- we, you sort of loop back to our conversation about the dollar, like, after we imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014-

Trevor Noah 1:33:46 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:33:46 ... and I was involved in this, it was actually in 2014 before we had any sanctions or export controls or tariffs on China that Xi Jinping said, "Hold on a second. If this can happen to Russia-

Trevor Noah 1:33:56 Oh

Eddie Fishman 1:33:57 ... it can happen to us."

Trevor Noah 1:33:57 Damn.

Eddie Fishman 1:33:58 So it was in 2014, a long, long time ago-

Trevor Noah 1:34:01 Hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:34:01 ... that China started trying to build alternative payment systems to the dollar so that they could, you know, buy oil in RMB or, you know, clear their trade, uh, through programs that didn't, you know, go through the West.

Trevor Noah 1:34:13 Oh, damn.

Eddie Fishman 1:34:13 Um, but it wasn't like-

Trevor Noah 1:34:15 Hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:34:15 ... Canada was doing that or Japan or South Korea or France

Trevor Noah 1:34:18 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:34:18 ... right? It was, like, countries

Eddie Fishman 1:34:20 that saw themselves as potentially allied with Russia or, you know, they might do something similar to Russia, right?

Trevor Noah 1:34:26 Right. Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:34:26 Um, I don't think anyone in France is right now thinking about an imperialist war in the, in the, in sort of the way that, you know, Russia has invaded Ukraine, you know? So they don't see themselves like potentially the Russians. But now you do have, like, that shadow of a doubt-

Trevor Noah 1:34:39 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:34:39 ... all around the world, including in, like, the UK, you know, including in countries that are, like, our, our c- very close allies who are thinking, "How do we build security against America?"

Trevor Noah 1:34:50 Damn. How do you create our unchokable points?

Eddie Fishman 1:34:53 Yeah. I mean, look, Canada-

Trevor Noah 1:34:55 Hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:34:55 ... I mean, to, to the choke points, I mean, Canada, um, is a petrostate, right? I mean, their, their, their vast majority of their exports are oil and gas.

Trevor Noah 1:35:03 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:35:04 Um, to your point about the convoys, right?

Trevor Noah 1:35:05 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 1:35:05 Um, Canada sells their oil largely via pipelines, and those pipelines are fixed infrastructure and they only go one direction.

Trevor Noah 1:35:13 South.

Eddie Fishman 1:35:13 They go south.

Trevor Noah 1:35:13 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:35:14 They sell all their oil and gas to the United States, and for a long time that's been a very profitable business.

Trevor Noah 1:35:18 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:35:18 They've got a very large market for their energy. Well, right now they're like, "Hold on. What happens if the US, you know, sanctions us or puts tariffs on us?"

Trevor Noah 1:35:27 Hmm.

Eddie Fishman 1:35:27 And so they're investing billions of dollars to build pipelines to the coasts so they can sell their oil and gas to China, to Europe-

Trevor Noah 1:35:36 Oh

Eddie Fishman 1:35:36 ... so that they can't be just de- dependent on the United States.

Trevor Noah 1:35:39 You know, what you're, what I'm hearing you say in this conversation is it's so interesting how history will repeat itself, but essentially in trying to create a stranglehold on, like, every country and every leader and every moment, it feels like the US has done the exact opposites. You know, like an overbearing parent that tries to control every single aspect-

Eddie Fishman 1:36:05 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:36:05 ... of their child's life.

Eddie Fishman 1:36:06 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:36:06 Now their child has a secret phone and has secret friends and has a secret life. It feels like that's sort of what's happening to the US now is now Canada's going, "Oh, can I build my own pipeline? Can I make new friends?"

Eddie Fishman 1:36:17 Chinese payment systems.

Trevor Noah 1:36:19 "Can I grow?" Yeah. And then Brazil is going, "Can we sell, you know, food to China?" And China's going, "Can we buy food from these people and..." It, it, it seems like it has, in some ways, created the thing in the same way that you said with the Germans at the beginning of this conversation. They were like, "Oh, we're gonna go after all of these people." And those people, because they w- went after-

Eddie Fishman 1:36:38 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:36:38 ... went to America and created the machinery that then took down the Germ- it... Do you get what I'm saying?

Eddie Fishman 1:36:43 Mm-hmm. 100%.

Trevor Noah 1:36:44 Wow. This has been fascinating. This is, I mean, 'cause it's ongoing, Eddie.

Eddie Fishman 1:36:50 Yeah. I mean-

Trevor Noah 1:36:51 Like, it's not, there's no, there's no, like, conclusion in your book. There's no like, "And then they lived happily ever after."

Eddie Fishman 1:36:54 No.

Trevor Noah 1:36:54 That's what I mean.

Eddie Fishman 1:36:55 No.

Trevor Noah 1:36:55 It's just, we're just there.

Eddie Fishman 1:36:57 There are two processes right now that I sort of see as, like, what's fundamentally reshaping the global economic system, the whole international order.

Trevor Noah 1:37:05 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:37:06 You have an economic arms race in which countries are looking what the United States has done with choke points, with the dollar, with, uh, semiconductors, you know, that we've, uh, you know, put an embargo onto China, and saying, "Well, what are the choke points we have that we can weaponize?" Because economic warfare, it's a good way to compete, right?

Trevor Noah 1:37:24 Mm-hmm.

Eddie Fishman 1:37:24 Compared with nuclear weapons-

Trevor Noah 1:37:25 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:37:25 ... which you're never gonna use-

Trevor Noah 1:37:26 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:37:26 ... you actually

Eddie Fishman 1:37:27 can use choke points. And so they're doing that. And then the other thing they're doing is this scramble for economic security.

Trevor Noah 1:37:33 Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:37:33 It's what are the choke points that make us vulnerable-

Trevor Noah 1:37:36 Mm-hmm

Eddie Fishman 1:37:36 ... to Chi- you know, that China could use against us, and that's why right now in the US we're investing tens of billions of dollars in our domestic critical minerals industry, 'cause we don't wanna be vulnerable to this China, uh, Chinese choke point on rare earths.

Trevor Noah 1:37:48 Right. Yeah.

Eddie Fishman 1:37:49 Um, but also now to the United States, where, you know, we mentioned Canada, we mentioned China with the payment system. I mean, Europe, you know, they're now thinking can they build alternative to cloud services? You know, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, they dominate the global inter- internet. They build all the infrastructure that the internet runs through.

Trevor Noah 1:38:05 Right. Mm.

Eddie Fishman 1:38:05 And these-

Trevor Noah 1:38:06 And Europe wants their own now. They want something that they can rely on.

Eddie Fishman 1:38:09 Exactly. And so I think these two processes, the way I see it, are just gonna keep playing out- Until we have a fundamentally reshaped global economy.

Trevor Noah 1:38:17 Yeah

Eddie Fishman 1:38:18 Until globalization

Eddie Fishman 1:38:19 is something that we learn about in the history books.

Trevor Noah 1:38:21 It's just a moment in time, as opposed to the way things are.

Eddie Fishman 1:38:24 Exactly. I think that's what's happening right now, and there are different ways that could go, right? We don't know what the end point is, but I'm pretty confident that those two forces, this economic arms race and the scramble for economic security, are gonna continue to play out until we have a fundamentally new global economic order.

Trevor Noah 1:38:39 Then Eddie, you just gonna keep coming back, my friend.

Eddie Fishman 1:38:42 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:38:42 We're just gonna keep having you back on the podcast, and we're just gonna, we're just gonna follow it step by step. This has been riveting.

Eddie Fishman 1:38:48 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 1:38:49 Thank you. Like, really, this has been, your insight, the way you, the way you share things, the way you grapple with them.

Speaker 1:38:53 The way you explain.

Trevor Noah 1:38:54 Yeah, the way you explain.

Speaker 1:38:55 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:38:55 Can I tell you keep doing that? 'Cause I think we take for granted how many news stories people consume on a surface level, but we never actually get an understanding of, and I think you do a really good job of that. So thank you very much for joining us.

Eddie Fishman 1:39:07 It's my pleasure. I enjoyed hanging out with you guys.

Trevor Noah 1:39:09 This was lots of fun, man.

Eddie Fishman 1:39:10 Good to see you.

Speaker 1:39:10 You're the man.

Eddie Fishman 1:39:11 You too.

Speaker 1:39:11 [laughs]

Eddie Fishman 1:39:13 See you in the department. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:39:14 [laughs] This segment is brought to you by Verizon. So Joe, most iconic World Cup moment ever. What has to be in the list? Throw me.

Speaker 1:39:29 So many. But as a Messi fan, as someone who has been given so much joy by Messi, I think 2022 World Cup, seeing football finally give back to Messi something that has, he has wanted for so long, and winning that World Cup-

Trevor Noah 1:39:45 Let me

Trevor Noah 1:39:46 know when I should pull out my violin, please.

Speaker 1:39:48 Look-

Trevor Noah 1:39:48 Let me know when I should pull out-

Speaker 1:39:49 Look, this man-

Trevor Noah 1:39:50 It, like you make like-

Speaker 1:39:51 ... had come so close in '20.

Trevor Noah 1:39:53 Yeah, but it's not like the most-

Speaker 1:39:54 '18

Trevor Noah 1:39:54 ... is it the most iconic moment?

Speaker 1:39:56 It was seeing him lift that trophy.

Trevor Noah 1:39:57 No, Joe, come on. Come on.

Speaker 1:39:59 Messi, okay, he's-

Trevor Noah 1:40:00 Okay, here, I'll throw-

Speaker 1:40:01 He's, you know-

Trevor Noah 1:40:01 I'll throw one at-

Speaker 1:40:01 Let, let me first

Speaker 1:40:02 go. Messi has been, has been hunting for this World Cup for forever.

Trevor Noah 1:40:05 Yeah, this is just-

Speaker 1:40:06 It's almost like-

Trevor Noah 1:40:06 ... his story

Speaker 1:40:06 ... imagine you've been sliding into a girl's DM.

Trevor Noah 1:40:08 Ask, ask people-

Speaker 1:40:09 You've been sliding and sliding and sliding, and finally she says hi back. That's what it felt like.

Trevor Noah 1:40:13 Yeah, for you. No one else cares about your DMs. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying no one cares about Messi's win. I'm just saying as an iconic moment-

Speaker 1:40:21 Okay

Trevor Noah 1:40:21 ... I'll throw one at you that I think-

Speaker 1:40:22 All right

Trevor Noah 1:40:22 ... is more iconic. Roberto Baggio missing his penalty.

Speaker 1:40:27 That was iconic, but it was also very traumatic. For me-

Trevor Noah 1:40:31 [laughs]

Speaker 1:40:31 ... it's the first moment. It was the first mo- it was the first moment that I realized how high the highs in soccer can be-

Trevor Noah 1:40:37 And how lows

Speaker 1:40:37 ... how low the lows can be.

Trevor Noah 1:40:38 You know what was crazy about-

Speaker 1:40:40 Because-

Trevor Noah 1:40:40 ... about the Baggio thing for me, is how it connected us in a world that didn't even have social media.

Speaker 1:40:47 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:40:47 Right? No one had social media. I was in school-

Speaker 1:40:50 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:40:51 ... and kids were talking to each other. We, you know, we called it the Baggio from that on.

Speaker 1:40:55 The Baggio. Yes, yes.

Trevor Noah 1:40:56 If you kicked the ball-

Speaker 1:40:57 Over and you miss

Trevor Noah 1:40:57 ... and you missed-

Speaker 1:40:58 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:40:58 ... the crossbar, people, you called yourself Baggio-

Speaker 1:41:00 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:41:00 ... when you did it.

Speaker 1:41:00 Yes. It was-

Trevor Noah 1:41:01 You would kick and you'd be like, "Baggio!" He be- imagine being one of the greatest attacking players of your time.

Speaker 1:41:08 The best player in the world at the time.

Trevor Noah 1:41:10 And then-

Speaker 1:41:11 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:41:11 ... after one action-

Speaker 1:41:12 Defines you

Trevor Noah 1:41:13 ... become, becoming the verb-

Speaker 1:41:16 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:41:16 ... for missing a ball.

Speaker 1:41:18 He also, it, it also, he was a player of the tournament. He had dragged Italy, again, kicking and screaming to the final. He had fans all over. Madonna had a crush on him.

Trevor Noah 1:41:27 Maradona.

Speaker 1:41:27 Madonna.

Trevor Noah 1:41:28 Oh, Madonna.

Speaker 1:41:28 Madonna, the Material Girl.

Trevor Noah 1:41:29 I was like Maradona. I was like-

Speaker 1:41:30 No, no

Trevor Noah 1:41:30 ... Madonna?

Speaker 1:41:31 The Material Girl herself. She had been photographed time and again-

Trevor Noah 1:41:34 You're lying

Speaker 1:41:35 ... wearing his jersey at concerts, out jogging. So you know you're really, you've really made it-

Trevor Noah 1:41:40 Damn

Speaker 1:41:40 ... when the Material Girl is objectifying you.

Trevor Noah 1:41:41 She hasn't worn that shirt since.

Speaker 1:41:42 And then, yes. And then to go from that-

Trevor Noah 1:41:44 She hasn't worn-

Speaker 1:41:46 To that

Trevor Noah 1:41:46 ... that shirt since.

Speaker 1:41:48 Yes. So I can give you-

Trevor Noah 1:41:48 That's up there.

Speaker 1:41:49 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:41:49 That's, okay, okay. Wait, here's another one that I think could be the greatest, the most iconic moment. Luis Suarez handball against Ghana, South Africa 2010 World Cup.

Speaker 1:42:01 Yeah, I can see why you picked that. Home World Cup, but-

Trevor Noah 1:42:04 No, forget Home World Cup

Speaker 1:42:05 ... okay, yes.

Trevor Noah 1:42:05 Forget, take South Africa out.

Speaker 1:42:06 Okay, okay.

Trevor Noah 1:42:07 I know I'm biased.

Speaker 1:42:08 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:42:08 Take South Africa out. Picture the moment. Ghana is on the cusp of doing what no African team has ever done before.

Speaker 1:42:16 Reach the semifinal of the World Cup.

Trevor Noah 1:42:17 Reaching the semifinal of the World Cup.

Speaker 1:42:19 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:42:19 The whole world is now, like we were all supporting Ghana.

Speaker 1:42:23 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:42:23 Right? If we're honest.

Speaker 1:42:24 Yes, yes.

Trevor Noah 1:42:24 The whole world.

Speaker 1:42:25 Yes, apart from Uruguay. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:42:26 In the, yeah. It was Uruguay on their own.

Speaker 1:42:27 Against the idea.

Trevor Noah 1:42:28 It was Uruguay-

Speaker 1:42:29 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:42:29 ... and then the world was supp- 'cause Ghana was like a Cinderella team.

Speaker 1:42:32 Yes, yes.

Trevor Noah 1:42:32 Right? So you had South Africans-

Speaker 1:42:34 Also the, also this is an African World Cup

Trevor Noah 1:42:35 ... you had Germans, you had, yeah. It was the, and it was-

Speaker 1:42:36 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:42:36 ... it was Africa's, like Shakira said, "It's time for Africa."

Speaker 1:42:39 Time for Africa. Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:42:40 Right?

Speaker 1:42:40 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:42:40 It was time for Africa. Ghana's in this cup.

Speaker 1:42:43 Ghana is the only remaining country from Africa.

Trevor Noah 1:42:44 They are about-

Speaker 1:42:45 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:42:45 ... to go through.

Speaker 1:42:48 A header comes in, bound for the net.

Trevor Noah 1:42:51 And then the hand-

Speaker 1:42:52 And then-

Trevor Noah 1:42:52 ... not of the goalkeeper.

Speaker 1:42:54 Yes. The hand of Suarez. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:42:55 The hand of Suarez. [laughs] And bro, the craziest thing was I loved Luis Suarez.

Speaker 1:43:00 He didn't pretend.

Trevor Noah 1:43:00 He's one of my favorite players.

Speaker 1:43:02 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:43:02 He, he d- that's another thing.

Speaker 1:43:02 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:43:03 He didn't, he didn't lie.

Speaker 1:43:04 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:43:04 He just put his hand up, knocked the ball out.

Speaker 1:43:07 I'm taking one for the team.

Trevor Noah 1:43:08 Takes the red card.

Speaker 1:43:09 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:43:10 Do you think he knew his goalkeeper had a chance of saving it?

Speaker 1:43:12 No, no, no. The goalkeeper was beaten. Goalkeeper was on-

Trevor Noah 1:43:13 No, no, I'm saying-

Speaker 1:43:14 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:43:14 ... no, I'm saying the penalty.

Speaker 1:43:15 Oh, y- I think the thing is, if you're in the 93rd minute and your country is on the verge of going out of the World Cup, and the keeper is beaten and the goal, the ball is goal bound, you're going like, "You know what? I'm taking my chances, and I'm hoping, I'm hoping. 'Cause the thing is if I stop

Speaker 1:43:31 it now, at least it doesn't go in." And-

Trevor Noah 1:43:34 He is, he is an instinct player

Speaker 1:43:35 ... Suarez played-

Trevor Noah 1:43:35 Yeah

Speaker 1:43:35 ... yeah, he played the advantages.

Trevor Noah 1:43:37 Suarez, Suarez is an instinct player. I will, I think that's part of what made him great. The man-

Speaker 1:43:41 I think, I think, I think most other players would have hesitated, and I think that's the thing you're saying.

Trevor Noah 1:43:46 Yeah.

Speaker 1:43:46 He was unapologetic. He didn't hesitate, and he knew the punishment that was coming. And he went like, "You know what? I'm going to gamb and risk it."

Trevor Noah 1:43:53 I wonder if he's ever been to Africa ever since.

Speaker 1:43:55 No, he's public enemy number one.

Trevor Noah 1:43:57 He can't, dude.

Speaker 1:43:57 He's the entire Africa-

Trevor Noah 1:43:59 He can't

Speaker 1:43:59 ... 'cause what happened was-

Trevor Noah 1:44:00 Suarez connected us in a way that no-

Speaker 1:44:02 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:44:02 ... leader ever could.

Speaker 1:44:03 He didn't just connect Africa. He connected the diaspora. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:44:06 That's what I'm saying. Like everywhere in the world.

Speaker 1:44:07 Everyone, yes. Everyone who was watching, yes.

Trevor Noah 1:44:09 We all came together-

Speaker 1:44:09 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:44:09 ... against Luis Suarez.

Speaker 1:44:10 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:44:10 And the crazy thing is like I still love him. He's still one, I loved him from Liverpool. I love him as a player. He was at Barcelona.

Speaker 1:44:17 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:44:17 So he's like, it's e- he's this lovable villain.

Speaker 1:44:19 You love him when he's on your team especially.

Trevor Noah 1:44:21 That's the best way to put it.

Speaker 1:44:22 Although he played for, yeah. You'd always love him if he-

Trevor Noah 1:44:24 Yeah, if Suarez did that for your team.

Speaker 1:44:26 He's like Draymond Green if he was a bit more talented

Trevor Noah 1:44:29 I don't know who, this is a slam-

Speaker 1:44:31 No-

Trevor Noah 1:44:31 Who was a bit more talented?

Speaker 1:44:32 It's Draymond Green-

Trevor Noah 1:44:33 Damn

Speaker 1:44:34 ... had the talent of-

Trevor Noah 1:44:35 Shots-

Speaker 1:44:35 ... Asamoah Gyan

Trevor Noah 1:44:36 ... fired

Speaker 1:44:36 And [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:44:37 I don't know where Draymond Green is, but shots have been fired from Uganda all the way to Draymond Green.

Speaker 1:44:42 No, no, no, because what, what, what, what makes, what makes it even worse is, so Suarez gambols.

Trevor Noah 1:44:46 Yeah.

Speaker 1:44:46 And then he wins.

Trevor Noah 1:44:47 Yeah, he did win.

Speaker 1:44:48 Because the penalty, you know, again-

Trevor Noah 1:44:49 Yeah

Speaker 1:44:49 ... Asamoah Gyan almost does a Baggio. You know, he hits a cross, but the penalty-

Trevor Noah 1:44:53 Man

Speaker 1:44:53 ... doesn't go in. So Ghana, the game goes into extra time. Ghana is eliminated in the penalties.

Trevor Noah 1:44:59 Yeah.

Speaker 1:44:59 But what made Suarez even more of a villain is once Asamoah Gyan misses the penalty-

Trevor Noah 1:45:06 The way he celebrates

Speaker 1:45:06 ... they cut to him-

Trevor Noah 1:45:08 Yeah

Speaker 1:45:08 ... on the sidelines celebrating like crazy while the entire Africa was going through this trauma.

Trevor Noah 1:45:13 You know, you know what it, what it also left me with is, like, everyone has, everyone says sportsmanship.

Speaker 1:45:19 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:45:19 But I always wonder, if you do something that is part of the game and you're willing to take the punishment, is that not part of the game?

Speaker 1:45:28 It is.

Trevor Noah 1:45:29 'Cause it's not like Suarez shot someone.

Speaker 1:45:30 No, he didn't.

Trevor Noah 1:45:31 Right?

Speaker 1:45:32 And the thing is, he was greeted in Uruguay as a national hero, obviously. But we also taught from when we are young that crime doesn't pay, or the villain doesn't win.

Trevor Noah 1:45:42 Right, yeah.

Speaker 1:45:42 We are taught, like Hollywood teaches us this, fairy tales teach us this, and in this one moment, all that was turned upside down 'cause Suarez actually did win. Crime actually did pay. Suarez missed the semifinal, which means they actually, it's part of the reason why they lost to Holland 'cause Holland made the final against Spain.

Trevor Noah 1:46:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:46:00 Suarez would have been the difference, but at least-

Trevor Noah 1:46:02 He probably would have been the difference

Speaker 1:46:03 ... Yes, but you could see in that moment, when Africa, when you talk to Africans about that moment-

Trevor Noah 1:46:08 Man

Speaker 1:46:08 ... you can see them having flashbacks. I think-

Trevor Noah 1:46:10 My friend, we are all-

Speaker 1:46:11 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:46:11 ... we are still... Yeah.

Speaker 1:46:13 People are still in therapy.

Trevor Noah 1:46:14 That was our great-

Speaker 1:46:14 Over that, yes

Trevor Noah 1:46:14 ... that was our greatest hope, that moment. But maybe that's why we should be grateful to Suarez, right? As Africans, we've always needed things that connect us as people. We're always

Trevor Noah 1:46:23 looking for moments that bring us together as a nation, right? South Africans have never felt more African than in that moment.

Speaker 1:46:29 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:46:29 Right? Which is what we need more than ever. So in, in many ways-

Speaker 1:46:33 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:46:33 ... I would argue Suarez might have robbed Ghana, but what he gifted Africa-

Speaker 1:46:37 Long term. Long term, yes

Trevor Noah 1:46:38 ... Long-term thinking.

Speaker 1:46:39 [laughs] No, the, he united Africa more than, as you said, more than anyone. But also the funny thing about that-

Trevor Noah 1:46:43 Luis Suarez, the Nelson Mandela-

Speaker 1:46:44 Of Af- [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:46:45 ... of Africa. [laughs]

Speaker 1:46:46 No, the funny, the funny thing about that moment, the funny thing, Nelson Mandela is funny. The funny thing about that moment is in that particular World Cup, Siphiwe Tshabalala had scored the goal-

Trevor Noah 1:46:55 Yeah

Speaker 1:46:55 ... that made ev- which, Tshabalala's goal felt like the moon landing for Africa.

Trevor Noah 1:47:00 Yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:47:00 Like one small kick for man, one giant kick for mankind.

Trevor Noah 1:47:04 For, for, yeah.

Speaker 1:47:04 Yes. And then Suarez brought us back down to Earth. Same World Cup, two very contrasting emotions, and I think if you're talking about bringing together a continent or bring, Tshabalala gave us the delirium, and then Suarez gave us, like, the depth of-

Trevor Noah 1:47:19 Despair

Speaker 1:47:19 ... despair.

Trevor Noah 1:47:20 True despair. But man, he gave us one of the greatest moments of all time.

Speaker 1:47:23 What a moment to pick. What a moment to pick as an African.

Trevor Noah 1:47:25 Ah. As an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Verizon is bringing once-in-a-lifetime experiences to their customers, including free tickets to matches and pitch-side access during gameplay. If you're not with Verizon, no sweat. Stop by a Verizon store to get in on the action and learn about their offers for new customers. [upbeat music] Thank you so much for watching the episode. If you enjoyed it, pass it on to a friend. If you didn't enjoy it, pass it on to your friend still. Let them suffer for a change. And don't forget to engage with us in the comments. Uh, if you wanna, uh, suggest a guest, maybe there's questions you want, maybe there's ideas that you have, you can chat to us. We will read through the comments, and we'll get into it. Either way, I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for hanging out with us on What Now? And remember, we do this for you, so we would like to hear from you. Till next time. Thank you.