Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine | Lex Fridman Podcast #286

If you could talk to Vladimir Putin once again, now, what kind of, wha- what kind of things would you talk about here? What kind of questions would you ask? The following is a conversation with Oliver Stone. He's one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, with three Oscar wins and 11 Oscar nominations. His films tell stories of war and power, fearlessly, and often controversially, shining a light on the dark parts of American and global history. His films include Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, Scarface, JFK, Nixon, Alexander, W, Snowden, and documentaries where he has interviewed some of the most powerful and consequential people in the world, including Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Vladimir Putin. And in this conversation, Oliver and I mostly focus our discussion on Vladimir Putin, Russia, and the war in Ukraine. My goal with these conversations is to understand the human being before me, to understand not just what they think, but how they think, to steel man their ideas, and to steel man the devil's advocate, all in service of understanding, not derision. I have done this poorly in the past. I'm still struggling with this, but I'm working hard to do better. I believe the moment we draw lines between good people and evil people, we'll lose our ability to see that we're all one people in the most fundamental of ways, and we'll lose track of the deep truth expressed by the old Solzhenitsyn line that I return to time and time again, that the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. Oliver Stone has a perspective that he extensively documents in his powerful controversial series, The Untold History of the United States, that imperialism and the military-industrial complex pave the path to absolute power, and thus corrupt the minds of the leaders and institutions that wield it. From this perspective, the way out of the humanitarian crisis and human suffering in Ukraine, and the way out from the pull of the beating drums of nuclear war is not simple to understand. But we must, because all of humanity hangs in the balance. I will talk to many people who seek to understand the way out of this growing catastrophe, including to historians, to leaders, and perhaps most importantly, to people on the ground in Ukraine and Russia. Not just about war and suffering, but about life, friendship, family, love, and hope. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Oliver Stone. You're working on, uh, a documentary now about nuclear energy.

Yes.

So it's interesting to talk about this. Energy is such a big part of the world, about the geopolitics of the world, about the way the world is. What do you think is the role of nuclear energy in the 21st century?

Good question. And first of all, obvious- everyone's talking about climate change, right? So here I wake up to that a few years ago, and c- clearly were concerned, huh? Uh, I, uh, picked up a book by Josh Goldstein and his, his co-author who's Swedish, those two wrote a book called Bright Future, A Bright Future. It came out a few years ago, and I lapped it up. It was a book, fact-based, w- clear, not too long, and not too technical. And, uh, it was very clear that they were i- in favor of all kinds of re- uh, renewables, renewable energy, yes. They hated, uh, made it very clear how dangerous oil and, uh, gas were, methane, and made it very clear to the layman like me, and at the same time said that this renewables can work so far, but the gap is enormous as to what, how much electricity this count- the world is gonna need in, uh, 2050 and beyond. Two, three, four times, we don't even know the damage. But we have India, we have China, we have Africa, we have Asia coming onto the scene wanting more and more electricity. So they address the problem as a global one, not just as often in the United States you get the ethnocentric United States point of view that we nee- we, w- you know, we're doing well, blah, blah, blah. We're not doing well. But we, we, we, we sell that to people that we're comfortable, we spend more energy than anybody, this country, per c- per capita, th- than anybody. And at the same time, we don't seem to understand the global picture. So that's what they did, and they made me very aware. So the only way to close that gap, the only way in their mind is nuclear energy. And talking about a gap of building a huge amount of reactors over the next 30 years, and starting now. Uh, they make that point over and over again. Uh, so o- obviously this country, the United States, is not gonna go in that direction, because it just is incapable with its, of having that kind of will, political will. And fear is a huge factor, and still a lot of shibboleths, a lot of myths about nuclear energy ha- have, uh, confused and confounded the landscape. The environmentalists have played a huge role in outdoing good things, many good things, but also confusing and confounding the landscape, and making accusations against nuclear energy that were exaggerated. So taking all these things into consideration, we set about making this documentary, which is about, uh, finished now, almost finishing. It's an hour and 40 minutes, and that was the hard part, getting it down from about three and a half hours to about this, something more manageable. And-