Vulnerabilities in Space + Updates on the Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East— with David Ignatius

David Ignatius, a prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post and bestselling author, joins Scott to discuss space warfare and the vulnerabilities of our satellite systems. We also get an update on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. David has been covering the latter for more than four decades. Follow him on X, @IgnatiusPost. And check out his latest novel, Phantom Orbit: A Thriller here. Scott opens by giving us an update on his travels. He then shares his thoughts on OpenAI’s management shakeups and his fears about AI learning from the gnarly internet. Algebra of Happiness: rein in the drinking. Follow our podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The new LinkedIn Hiring Pro can't undo your last hire, the no-show. Who set you back because they didn't show up on day one, or day two, or ever again? And now your product launch is delayed because you're talking to alien abduction podcasters to track them down. But LinkedIn Hiring Pro can help make sure your next hire sticks. In fact, businesses who use LinkedIn are 24% less likely to reopen a role in the next 12 months. Hire right the first time with LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Post a free job today at LinkedIn.com/quality.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest, or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior-like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:00Scott Galloway?

  Episode 301. 301 is the area code belonging to the western part of Maryland. In 1901, the College Board introduced its first standardized test, which later became the SAT. True story, I have failed almost every standardized test I have taken. During my prostate exam, my doctor told me it's perfectly normal to become aroused and even ejaculate. That being said, I still wish he hadn't.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Go, go, go!

• 1:37Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 301st episode of the Prof G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with David Ignatius, a prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post, who's been covering the Middle East and the CIA for more than four decades. He's also a prolific author with a new novel called Phantom Orbit: A Thriller. We discuss with David themes from his latest books, such as space warfare and the state of global security. We also get updates on the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. I really enjoyed this conversation. David is...

• 2:05Scott Galloway?

  You know, he's sort of a breath of fresh air because he's this reasonable guy who makes very thoughtful, measured points, acknowledges other points, is not afraid to say, I don't know. I really, I think we sort of, whatever that tone is, that mix of intelligence and humility, I think we need more of it in our discourse. Okay, what's happening? The dog is off to Vegas and New York this week. That's right, ladies. Hello. 1999, all you can eat, Golden Nugget buffet. I used, true story, true story. I used to go with my friend occasionally on Friday night, me and my friend, Lee Lotus, would get ridiculously fucking high on a Friday afternoon and we would decide that we should absolutely get in his ruby red Volkswagen Jetta and head to Las Vegas. And we'd take, I think I would

• 2:50Scott Galloway?

  go to the emergency student loan window at UCLA where all you'd had to do was show them your ID and they'd give you 50 bucks, which you had to pay back, I think, within seven days. By the way, by the way, hate speech is okay. It needs nuance, but if I was one day late on my $50 loan, I would get suspended. Anyways, I see that as a little bit inconsistent. Anyways, I get 50 bucks and we would head to Vegas. And about three hours into the five hour drive, it was like that scene from, was it Singles? What was that scene? Ballers? I forget what it was. The one that made, that made the tall guy, the really tall guy famous in Jon Favreau.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  Took out $300, but I'm only betting with 100. I can't afford any more than that. All right. I figure if we buy a lot of chips, though, the pit also sees us, so comp us all sorts of free shit that's all works over there, right? But you gotta be cool, man. Cool, baby. I'm cool. They're gonna give daddy a room, some breakfast. Have you been in singing? I don't know, just a place, man. Boy, what the hell are you wearing? I thought you said we were gonna wear suits.

• 3:44Scott Galloway?

  Oh, God, I literally, what part of my brain is dying? Every part of my brain is dying. That's why I shouldn't run for president in 30 fucking years, you weirdos. Drop out of the race. Anyways, about two, three hours into the road trip to Vegas, we would realize we had made a terrible mistake. But by the time we got to the Golden Nugget, which was operated by Steven Wynn, kind of his first big casino, and their big draw was their all you can eat buffet. It was either 9.99 or 19.99, but I would literally just load up. And it was, it was actually a great buffet. And then we'd play blackjack. And I remember I wore my, I remember this so distinctly, my mom's boyfriend, Terry.

• 4:22Scott Galloway?

  Had the most beautiful clothes and he gave me a cardigan that was too small for him. And it was, I don't wear cardigans, but it was so beautiful. It was cashmere and had these really great original buttons. And I remember it was the first really nice piece of clothing I had. And it was the first time, remember when you're a kid and you feel sensations or emotions for the first time? I remember looking at my dad, speaking to a strange woman, and she was just giggling and laughing and touching his arm. And I remember it was the first time thinking, what is charm? Like, what is, what is kind of appeal? Because what my father was saying didn't seem that interesting, but she just found it fascinating. And I started figuring out, it's my father's accent and straw, strong jawline. Anyways, anyways, one of the first emotions I remember registering was just how beautiful

• 5:07Scott Galloway?

  this cardigan was. And I used to wear it everywhere. And I remember wearing it at the blackjack table. And if I ever got up to $20, I would have them cash in for two $10 chips and I'd slip it in the pockets of the cardigan such that I would know we would have at least gas money home. We each needed five bucks. Lee was more responsible than me, but I was worried one of us was going to end up with zero. And then we would bomb back. Sometimes we wouldn't even spend the night. We'd just go gamble for four or five hours, eat at the Golden Nugget and then head back. And obviously Steve Wynn went on to much bigger and better things. Anyways, Vegas, absolutely, absolutely love it. All right. Where on earth was I going with this? That's right. I'm off to Vegas. I'm speaking at the Financial Brand Conference, which I'm excited. Favorite show, favorite show. I used to see every Cirque du Soleil, See Above Edibles.

• 5:52Scott Galloway?

  Actually, that's not true. I wouldn't usually get high before going to Cirque du Soleil, but absolutely love that. And now my kind of fail safe recommendation for anyone going to Vegas, go to the Sphere. It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what's playing, go to the Sphere. The best description of my ketamine experience would be the Sphere. So if you don't want to do ketamine and you want to see what it's kind of like visually, experience something at the Sphere. I absolutely loved it. Saw U2 there. And it's a shame because I went to a Taylor Swift concert at the SoFi Stadium. I'm all about the venue now. Isn't that weird? I go to the venue more than I go to. The artist and so far I'd never been really wanted to go had an opportunity to go see Taylor Swift.

• 6:36Scott Galloway?

  Thought it was wonderful. This 15 year old girl came up to me and gave me one of those bracelets. It was really nice. That was a nice moment for me and said that her and her mom listened to the pod, which was both disturbing yet inspiring at the same time. Anyways, we left early, but the nicest moment was as we were driving out, the driver said, look over there. And there was this huge cement platform, you know, kind of this big terrace. And there were all these 30 and 40 something year old dudes in cargo pants, sitting there on their phones. And he said, it's all the dads who bring their daughters to the concert, but don't want to pay $1,500 for the ticket. So they just wait outside for three hours. And I thought, God, that's a nice moment. And then, and then I thought, oh my God, where are all the parents of these 15 year olds? And I found out that some of them are outside waiting for them.

• 7:21Scott Galloway?

  But the rest of them go to the sphere to see U2. It was literally the land of 50 something white people. I felt like I probably my entire, my entire freshman class from UCLA was at this concert. And it made me feel kind of old because Bono is sort of, I don't want to say losing his voice, but just doesn't have the voice he used to, which is understandable. I think he's probably early 60s. And on the high notes, he would do that trick where he put the mic towards the audience and have them sing, but still was amazing. And then Lady Gaga came out and sang two or three songs. Oh my God. Oh my God, that young woman can sing. Well, she's not that young anymore, is she? Anyways, she's a talent. Jesus Christ, she brought the house down.

• 8:02Scott Galloway?

  But if you have a chance, go to the sphere. All right. Enough of that. Onto some news. Our markets pod has officially launched on its own feed. That's right. I'm not even sure what that means. I sort of know what that means, but I'm sure you need to actually subscribe if you want to get our markets segment of Prof G. We're going to try and go deeper and unpacks around specific companies, valuations or sectors. Go a little deeper. That's right. We're, we're jumping in the deep end a little bit.

• 8:32Scott Galloway?

  By the way, this really weird image has popped in my mind when my son was like two or three. When you live in Florida, all you can think about is keeping your kid away from a body of water. The largest source of death among kids is not guns in Florida. It's pools. So we put a fence around the pool and we would put these weird alarms on our kids shirt. If it got near water, the alarm would go off and every once in a while the thing would go off. We'd start freaking out. You know, where's Alec? Where's Nolan? And it would end up the shirt was in the washer, the alarm went off. Anyways, I was out watching my son and he jumped in the water. You know, he got brave. He went to the deep end, he jumped in and he came up and there's a look of panic. And I immediately jumped in and grabbed him. And I remember thinking, it just could happen so fast.

• 9:15Scott Galloway?

  Kind of a macabre thought, but it jumped in, jumped in my mind. Anyways, dads and moms, anytime a little kid is near water. Here's my public service announcement. You are correct to be wildly, wildly paranoid. Seriously, that, that shit can end, can end really poorly, really fast. Anyways, back to the feed. Where am I going with this? So we have our new Prop Sheet Markets episode. We're going to go much deeper. Please rate and review us so we can reign supreme in the podcast world. By the way, first launch, first episode. And for a brief time, we were the 21st most downloaded podcast in the world and number one in business. So thank you for the support and the great launch.

• 9:59Scott Galloway?

  Right. What else is happening? OpenAI is going through more management shakeups. The firm's chief scientist resigned and then so did their head of alignment, who then posted on Twitter condemning OpenAI's leadership. The thread or the, I think it's Twitter. Is it Twitter? Is anyone still on Twitter? Anyways, Jan Leaky, Lakey, Likey, Jan Leaky. That's my nickname for my penis. Jan Leaky, oh, I just made that up. That's why you come here. That's why you come here for the, for the crisp ad hominem humor here. He said, I joined because I thought OpenAI would be the best place in the world to do this research. However, I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company's core priorities for quite some time. And so we finally reached a breaking point.

• 10:42Scott Galloway?

  And then he went on, Jan went on to write, over the past few months, my team has been sailing against the wind. Sometimes we were struggling for compute and it was getting harder and harder to get this crucial research done. Okay. So Sam Altman, who if you recall was fired and then quickly rehired and OpenAI's co-founder and president Greg Brockman, by the way, Greg Brockman, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That is, that is the anchor of a local news station in the seventies in California.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  From the desert to the sea, this is Greg Brockman.

• 11:13Scott Galloway?

  Anyways, he tweeted a lengthy response essentially saying they are committed to safety, but it's not an easy task. That's a whole lot of nothing. And then open quote, "There's no proven playbook for how to navigate the path to AGI. We think that empirical understanding can help inform the way forward. We believe both in delivering on the tremendous upside and working to mitigate the serious risks. We take our role here very seriously and carefully weigh feedback on our actions." That sounds like Sheryl Sandberg could have said that. Okay. So, open quote, "I'm gonna say a whole, whole lot of fucking nothing." Close quote. All right. So this shakeup here is essentially them stopping or when they come to the realization and stop pretending that they're anything but a for-profit company.

• 11:58Scott Galloway?

  And to a certain extent, I think that's what they're supposed to do. I think for-profit companies in America are the best in the world at what they do and should be trusted to do nothing else. What we need is actual regulation, not Senator Schumer's roadmap to regulations claiming that it's moving too fast. Well, fucking figure it out, Chuck. Anyways, this is the whole jazz hand, Sandbergian, reminiscent of Sheryl Sandberg, of hushed tones and all these AI experts talking about its dangers as they make tens of millions or worried they've created a monster after they've vested their tens of millions. I don't think that's helpful and I'm not even sure it's their responsibility. I think companies should be good citizens. I think they should be mindful, but at the end of the day, they will all make incremental

• 12:42Scott Galloway?

  decisions such that they can become loved and to be a billionaire in the United States is to be worshipped. And so I think people will make a series of incremental decisions and ignore and cherry pick information such that they become billionaires, even when deep down they probably know this is bad for the Commonwealth. But they think, once I become a billionaire, I'll make up for it and I'll do good things and I'll build hospitals and people will love me. And it's- Our elected representative's job to get in the way of that, to prevent a tragedy of the commons. And we keep hoping the better angels of these folks are going to show up. The scariest thing about AI that I've thought about recently, I mean, there's been a couple of things that just totally fucking freaked me out as I think about this thing and start to sort of wrap my head around it, or it begins to wrap its head around mine, is that,

• 13:25Scott Galloway?

  one, I think this could be, it's not going to be the death of media companies, but it's going to give them more pneumonia, or it's gonna, they're gonna slip and break another hip here and be even more disabled. Why? Because when you think about, why do you go to a media company? When I go to a media company, I go for news, right? But it's very hard to differentiate on news because unless you have a global news force or you get a scoop, everyone's going to have the same news. You know, I started getting alerts from every media company I follow about the president around dying and a helicopter crash. So why do you go to certain media companies over others? You go for voice. You like the voice of Fox, which tends to be, we hate Biden and, and all Democrats are libtards and President

• 14:07Scott Galloway?

  Trump is a victim and, you know, he's not, he's misunderstood. He's not a rapist. He's misunderstood and being unfairly persecuted. And then you go to MSNBC and they've decided that, you know, President Joe Biden is incredibly sharp and with it and has total command of the room, except, you know, when he's on, when he's on actual videotape. You go for voice. And I wonder if we're getting to a point where I'm going to be able to say in the morning, hey, Reuters, give me this morning's news in the voice of Jake Tapper with a, with a tone of Reuters. And there'll be no reason to ever leave Gemini. And they will create, their walled garden will become a, you know, a walled fortress. It won't be a garden that you can get in and out of and go to other places. You're just never going to leave.

• 14:52Scott Galloway?

  In addition, what really scared the shit out of me was that, okay, Reddit is providing a lot of data. Reddit's a media company, the New York Times has a lot of data and they're sort of thinking, well, our data will be able to monetize that because at some point, we're going to be able to hopefully put our own IP ring fence around our data. And be able to charge these L L Ms to access this great, rich, positive data. And then I heard that there are now L L Ms being created to produce fake data that other L L Ms can crawl. It's like when cows can produce their own meat, I guess, or like my youngest dog that eats the big dog shit. I call him our zero emissions dog. Anyways, think about that. It's pretty disgusting. And then he runs into the house and immediately wants to kiss us.

• 15:37Scott Galloway?

  But anyways, these L L Ms are now creating data for other L L Ms to crawl. Yeah, but the thing that really frightens me is that if you think about the tone, OpenAI can't crawl our conversations. I always have banter with my staff before the pod. We have Drew, we have Jennifer, we have Caroline. And the reason we have banter is we like each other, or I like them. I won't say each other, I like them. And I feel affection for them and we're funny and I think we're nice to each other. And I think we're complimentary and we're generally civil with each other. That is not the case when people interact on these platforms. A, there's a lot of fake bots that are there just to sow division and chaos. And B, people decide, well, I'm angry.

• 16:21Scott Galloway?

  I'm going to start shitposting someone or immediately go from zero to vile in like zero seconds flat. And what if AI, the primary tone of AI is based on the tone and the discourse of online discourse? And if you think about what's happened over the last 10 years, arguably, the most dangerous thing in the world, I would argue, is not Hamas, it's not Putin. It's that there is extremism across every nation right now. The far left and the far right because of an attempt by current, current incumbents to hold on to their positions. They make every district far left or far right. And so we send fucking crazies to Congress who hate each other. They can't even relate to each other.

• 17:03Scott Galloway?

  And the result is we get nothing done and we have extremism in almost every nation now on the far left and the far right. And extremism in the U S is bad because we get nothing done. But when it gets worse is when they kind of meet around certain issues. So I think the far left and the far right have become very anti Semitic. And that's very dangerous when extremist crazies actually come together. To agree on something, but what's going to hurt extremism? What's going to make our discourse even more coarse is if the key inputs to other media and documents and essays for kids and informing decisions becomes the tone of what the tone is online. Now, it's somewhat anodyne, the research or the, not the research, the returns I get

• 17:48Scott Galloway?

  on LLM so far, and I've used most of them, is that true? I've used a lot of them, is anodyne and polite. So it does appear that the people in charge are attempting to make it more civil and put in some safeguards and some guardrails so it doesn't go really hateful really soon. But here's the scary thing. Are we going to have a small number of sort of super beings known as AI where no one goes out for another opinion, where all of these media companies, basically they bring diversity, a lot of jobs, a lot of nuance, a lot of interesting views on things, they basically die a slow death because quite frankly, they might as well be a taco truck on Mars. Like, no one cares.

• 18:31Scott Galloway?

  No one even knows they're there because everyone can just stay and find the voice they want internally, too. The coarseness has become so ugly in our discourse, and I worry that these self-feeding, self-repairing, self-healing, self-hating LLMs that crawl data that is really vile is going to begin to inform our society. And pretty soon, we're going to end up like those fucked-up nations in Korea where they break into fistfights about every 12 or 18 months in parliament. We need to bring the temperature down. I do hope that there is some sort of legislation or some sort of innovation that does a better job of informing our digital world with our offline world. Because here's the good news, folks.

• 19:14Scott Galloway?

  The majority of people in our offline world are civil, they're empathetic, and most of the time, they're lovely. We'll be right back for our conversation with David Ignatius.

• 19:30Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Superhuman. The pace of modern work can be relentless. You're getting a constant influx of messages from a ton of different apps. You haven't closed all your browser tabs in a year. Everything seems urgent and staying on top of it all feels like an impossible task. Superhuman Go is an AI chat that's always there when you need it. Already aware of what you're doing and doesn't ask you to start from zero. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, help you be the best version of yourself at work. It handles the repetitive stuff so you can focus on the work that only you can do. Whether you need to summarize an endless email thread or prep for a meeting that's happening in five minutes, Superhuman Go works inside the tools and sites you already use: your browser, inbox, docs, and your project tools.

• 20:11Scott Galloway?

  And its AI chat is available on the side of your browser and it's always ready. No new tabs, no switching apps, no losing your place. This is AI that works with you, not on top of you, so that you have the time and brain space to solve the problems that matter. Check it out, find out more at superhuman.com.

• 20:33Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. The regentic trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude or Cursor. Want proof?

• 21:18Scott Galloway?

  Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash prof G for $1,000 off.

• 21:40Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. The regentic trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude or Cursor. Want proof?

• 22:25Scott Galloway?

  Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash prof G for $1,000 off.

• 22:57Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with David Ignatius, a prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and author of several books, including his latest, Phantom Orbit: A Thriller. David, where does this podcast find you?

• 23:09Speaker 05

  I am in my home in northwest Washington. This is the place where I write many of my columns and all of my fiction.

• 23:16Scott Galloway?

  So let's bust right into it. Your new book, Phantom Orbit, is a thriller about an invisible enemy that could disrupt a satellite signal central to our daily lives. So let's start there. Give us an overview of what this novel is trying to tell us or what it illuminates about the current state of play in technology and geopolitics.

• 23:36Speaker 05

  So this is a novel about the way in which space weapons, space warfare are coming to dominate warfare more broadly. I've become convinced in four visits to Ukraine that Ukraine is really the first space war. I can explain that in a minute. But the book opens with a Russian astrophysicist, not a defector, not a traitor, but somebody who's come to believe that Russia and China developed the ability to essentially have a kill switch that can disable the GPS system on which American communications everywhere, our cellphone calls, our air travel, our travel

• 24:19Speaker 05

  of every sort, depend. And he tries to communicate that to the United States, thinking as a responsibility to do so. And the CIA doesn't want to respond, doesn't get back to him. And through the book, one of the mysteries is why the CIA isn't dealing with this warning that he's making. But more broadly, it's a book about about what I think is the future of warfare, maybe the future of commerce as well, which is systems in space.

• 24:50Scott Galloway?

  So I immediately go to, there's one person who doesn't report to any government, who doesn't work for the government, I would argue, hasn't shown a lot, a great deal of fidelity to any specific Commonwealth, who I believe owns and controls 51% of the satellites in orbit. Do you see that as a risk?

• 25:12Speaker 05

  So I assume you're talking about Elon Musk?

• 25:14Scott Galloway?

  Correct.

• 25:15Speaker 05

  Let's just talk for a minute about Musk. I do think there's a risk there. But I also want to underline why he and the systems he runs are so important. So as you say, Starlink today has roughly 5,000 satellites in low earth orbit. They're able to provide broadband internet coverage for pretty much the whole world. Specifically, they're able to provide broadband internet coverage for the Ukrainian military in its forward positions, without which I don't think they could operate. So he and his system are crucial for the Ukraine's survival. He could decide tomorrow that he's sick of this forever war in Ukraine. He wants to sell Teslas, make Teslas in China and pull out.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  But there are some limits on his ability to do that because he has a contract with the Pentagon. But as the United States grows more and more dependent on our tech ecosystem to provide low-cost satellite launch, incredibly interesting new systems that do what our spy agencies could once do only now for everybody. Those private sector business people have much more leverage over our national security policy. And I do worry, what happens if one day they change their minds? We're putting a lot of eggs in their basket.

• 26:40Scott Galloway?

  So we'd talk a little bit about the underlying technology, phones. And I mean, there's, there's some technologies that have just advanced incredibly, you know, at a rapid pace, others not so rapid. Describe the technology around satellites and has the cadence of innovation there matched, underwhelmed, superseded advances in other types of technology? And what does that mean practically? Why are, why are the satellites now? What are they capable of that they weren't capable of, say, 10 or 20 years ago?

• 27:11Speaker 05

  So I think the most important aspect of this is the way in which costs have lowered because of competition, because of our entrepreneurial ecosystem. So just briefly reviewing in our minds, the history of, of space. I grew up in a world where Russia, when I was seven years old, launched the first satellite and then had the first cosmonaut in space. We were behind. The United States had an incredible catch-up effort. We put men on the moon. Nobody has equalled that to this day. There was the air of the space shuttle. We were totally dominant. But then for some reason, the United States lost interest in space.

• 27:53Speaker 05

  And to the point that we had to buy launch capability for satellites from other countries. We just didn't have the rockets to put big satellites in orbit. Russia supplied that for a time. And then along came commercial space. Along came Elon Musk and with SpaceX, the history of trying and trying and trying and finally getting it right. He has. Extraordinary low-cost launch capability, and that's been matched by others in the industry. So the things you can do in space cheaply, it's a much broader array. The communication satellites that are beaming broadband internet down to Earth,

• 28:37Speaker 05

  I don't think were imagined 10, 15 years ago. 5,000 satellites is a lot. Amazon's about to put 2,000 at least of its own in space to do its business. There are other companies around the world that are jumping into this as well. So the cost advantage is significant. All this stuff is in low Earth orbit. It's very vulnerable. The Russians have just, our intelligence community says, been thinking about the mismatch between all that we have and the little that they have and saying, if we needed to take out those low Earth orbit satellites, we could use a nuclear weapon. We could just create a debris field in low Earth orbit

• 29:19Speaker 05

  so nothing could pass, really, for a generation. So that's the vulnerability. But the basic question you're asking, GPS was a brilliant idea that was developed initially for national security purposes and just got better and more refined year by year. Russia tried to copy it from the beginning. It was very, very poor, had nothing like the resolution fidelity that the US had. China has a system called BeiDou that they've been working on very hard. It's pretty good, but it's not as good as GPS.

• 29:59Speaker 05

  Europe has its own system. India has a system. Japan has a system. Everybody knows this is the backbone of everything that you do. But it's vulnerable. It's vulnerable to attack. It's vulnerable to spoofing other mischief that can be done to interfere with the satellite. So I think one thing I want to do in this book is get people thinking about the technologies that are part of everyday life. I mean, who doesn't go a moment without a cellphone? But without GPS to locate where that phone is and allow it to work and exchange signals, the system would be untenable, wouldn't work.

• 30:46Scott Galloway?

  So a couple of thoughts, listening to you talk about this. One, they're vulnerable but to our civilian populations, isn't it, isn't part of this process to communicate to adversaries that an attack on our satellites would be like an attack on a civilian population that would be an act of war? Or do you think it's more realistic to develop technologies that make these things stealthy and more difficult to take out?

• 31:11Speaker 05

  So I think our vulnerability is greater because our dependence on these systems is greater. It's asymmetric in that sense. That's why Russia thinks if we obliterated everything in low Earth orbit, we'd suffer, but the Americans, the West, would suffer more. So that's why the balance of terror prevails and nuclear weapons may not be as applicable. I think hardening satellites, I think developing redundancy, I think finding ways to avoid vulnerable communications from satellites to Earth through the kind of thing that Starlink, Starlink uses mesh networks in space. You've got 5,000 satellites spinning

• 31:55Speaker 05

  around. They're creating their own internet, as it were, in space using mesh networks up there to exchange signals so that they can download them to Earth at the most appropriate opportune time. Technology like that are really helpful. We now have a space force that's first job is to figure out what's up there. What among the hundreds and hundreds of satellites might have attack capability by monitoring, not just from Earth, but close up to take a look. And they've seen some extraordinary things, which I try to describe in the book, that very cleverly configured Chinese seemingly attack satellites, Russian

• 32:38Speaker 05

  satellites that are structured like Matryoshka dolls, where a little satellite pops out of a big satellite and then goes toward the target. So then the space force will think. How do we harden the system so they're less vulnerable? Another thing we haven't talked about is the ability to use high-powered microwaves or lasers to beam malware into satellites from a distance without people on Earth necessarily being aware that that malware had been implanted, that it could be activated in a time of crisis. So you want to harden satellites against that kind of risk. And then finally, inevitably, the US will want its own offensive capability in space. I have no idea what that's going to be.

• 33:21Speaker 05

  This is the most classified area I've ever encountered as a journalist, as a writer, to try to penetrate. You just use those, don't get answers when you ask, okay, like, what weapons are you developing? But I'm sure they're developing some.

• 33:36Scott Galloway?

  I had one of those aha moments in technology. I remember the first time I bought something on my BlackBerry or took a picture of a check and it automatically showed up in my checking account. I had one of those moments, I think about a month or two months ago. I was on a plane and I used Starlink. And within two minutes of connecting to Starlink, I got a call on my phone and the quality, it was FaceTime, and the FaceTime call was perfect on a plane. I mean, it really is powerful.

• 34:03Speaker 05

  It's amazingly good technology.

• 34:05Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it's intoxicating. And a few days before, I had flown over the west coast, or excuse me, the east coast of Florida and saw a Starlink or a SpaceX rocket flying into space. I'm like, you just got to give it to this guy. I mean, he's not doing a photo-sharing app, he's putting satellites into space. But wouldn't the rest of the world pray for our problems in the sense that our vulnerabilities and our problems are a function of the fact that we're dominating this final frontier? You know, we're 25% of global GDP. We're, you know, we have the biggest military in the world, but I think we're maybe 40 or 50% of the world's military, maybe a little bit more than that. But it feels like we just dominate space. Isn't this an example of how America is leapfrogging ahead?

• 34:51Speaker 05

  So this is an example of the continuing dynamism of the American technology sector, as is the creation of large language models. Most things in technology were not as far behind as we worried we were. I think my response would be, in a characteristically American way, we end up sharing the technology that we create with the world and it enhances the world's ability to do the things that we do. The Internet was created in the United States initially for very limited purposes, to share defense information among different labs. We ended up sharing that with the world and encouraging a governance system

• 35:34Speaker 05

  through ICANN that was not controlled by government, but was controlled by people who were technically competent, who knew how to protect the system. We made it open. In that, sadly to me, paradox the modern world, is that that super-open communication system that we created and gave the world ends up empowering closed societies that can control it and adding a degree of instability to open societies that can't control it. Who could have predicted that? But that's the way it turned out. But we continue. As with GPS, a perfect example. This was an American idea. It was developed initially in secret. We shared the technology with the whole world.

• 36:19Speaker 05

  Everybody's got one. Everybody's better off for having one. We don't say boo about it. I think the main thing that the US tries to do is get some order and regulation for space, so things don't bump into each other. That whole command and control system for space the US runs, we're trying to spin off parts of it. But again, I think our problem is we create these fantastic technologies and then become vulnerable to them. Look at Internet hacking. Look at the vulnerability of everything we do in the United States to the assaults on the technology that we created. What do we do about that? We don't stop creating the technology. But we do need to think more about how to protect it.

• 37:03Scott Galloway?

  You said it's sort of the intersection of these technological developments and geopolitics. If you were, what do you see as the biggest threat? Maybe it's more than one. Is it some sort of malware? Is it a cyber attack? Is it a war in space? Is it AI becoming sentient and super weapons? If you were to try and guess what are the most frightening potential headlines? We might read in the next two or three years and involve technology. What is your best guess?

• 37:35Speaker 05

  So on the purely technological front, I think I do worry about the speed of warfare as AI systems increasingly make decisions. Because with hypersonic missiles, the decision time for human beings isn't there. So I'd liken it to what DeepMind or AlphaGo did to playing chess or Go. So as I understand it, AlphaGo understands every move that any human being ever made on a Go board and then can think of any move that could be made that no human being ever thought of.

• 38:19Speaker 05

  Same thing with chess. It's not just, it's not just a compendium of every move in the past that was made. It's something much more creative than that. So applied to warfare, a system that with that power can think of strategies, vulnerabilities, ways to exploit weakness that even the most aggressive military planners couldn't think of. And I know the person who was worried most about this before he died was Henry Kissinger. I talked to Kissinger at length. Kissinger wrote a couple of books about it. That AI presented enormous opportunities in ways we all know.

• 39:02Speaker 05

  But from his perspective, as somebody who'd spent really his whole career thinking about arms control, the real threat now wasn't the weapons, but the AI systems that would drive the use of the weapons. And as he died, that was the thing taught most in his mind, and he was right.

• 39:20Scott Galloway?

  So give us, you cover these conflicts. Give us your sense of the state of play of Ukraine or the war in Ukraine right now. It feels like we've been distracted with a bunch of other things and haven't spent that much time thinking about it.

• 39:32Speaker 05

  So just to briefly describe Ukraine as it seemed to me just over a month ago when I was last there. I visited with President Zelensky. It's always inspiring. In this case, it was inspiring and depressing. He described the situation where he was still then waiting for congressional approval of the weapons. And he said, if we don't get them, we have no choice but to retreat. And he drew me a little map of the battlefield and said, we have 2,000 rounds a day, the Russians have 8,000. We just can't hold these lines. As he draw them, we have to reduce, shrink them. We have to take some of our positions out. So that was happening.

• 40:17Speaker 05

  I fear it's happening now. If you read the news, the Russians are advancing in the east while I wait for the weapons to arrive. When the Ukrainians get the weapons that we're sending them, I think the wisest course for them is to consolidate their positions, to make sure the Russians don't gain any more territory and prepare for next year offensive operations that can begin to push the Russians back. The Russians are in it for the long haul, too. They just put in place a team in their defense ministry that's going to be about a war economy for as far ahead as we can imagine. Putin isn't giving up.

• 41:00Speaker 05

  So for me, the thing sadly that people need to focus on is giving Ukraine the resources to keep fighting.

• 41:11Speaker 05

  As long as it's willing to pay that cost, until it can get to the point where it has the leverage to push the Russians and the Chinese toward negotiations for a just negotiated settlement. I can't describe what that would look like. But this is one, let me tell you one other thing about, about what you see in Ukraine, which is interesting, I think, to your listeners. Ukraine has developed incredible entrepreneurial ecosystem. Ukrainians are making their own drones now that can reach far into Russia. They have attacked 200 miles east of Russia. In one case I read about recently, they've taken out

• 41:52Speaker 05

  roughly 15% of Russia's refining capacity. They're building drones because Russia's gotten better at EW, electronic warfare, that can jam the signals that allow guidance

• 42:07Speaker 05

  successful targeting by drones. They're putting AI at the edge in their drones. Cheap little drones, they make them in furniture stores. They're just kind of cheap little wood, but they fly. And then they're putting very sophisticated AI systems that can map the terrain. And even if they're cut off from any communications with satellite guidance or with their home base, can still get to their targets. They're doing that on their, on their own largely. Some American entrepreneurs and it's, it's the Ukraine war has become, if you remember from your history, the Spanish Civil War, the International Brigade. In Kiev now, there are entrepreneurs from all over the world. I met Australians, Portuguese, lots of Americans.

• 42:51Speaker 05

  And they're just coming there to help the Ukrainians think of ways to survive. It's, it's, it's a fascinating little, little world. There's more good journalism to describe it. So, you know, with, with technology, their technology is really good. And they have stayed ahead of the Russians. I think they can stay in the field, to come back to my point, until they have enough power to negotiate with Russia from a position of strength.

• 43:18Scott Galloway?

  Now, talk a little bit about your sense of the war in Gaza and how technology is playing out there.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  So, technologies failures in Gaza, Israel's technology superpower, Israel's technology, it appears from the New York Times reporting, was sufficient that they captured plans for what Hamas do on October 7. But human failure, the inability of senior intelligence officers to take seriously what junior intelligence officers had seen in the collection is part of the tragedy. The, you know, October 7, Israel just didn't see it coming. Israel didn't see the trench system, the underground metros, they call it, the tunnels.

• 44:09Speaker 05

  It turns out in this tiny area, Gaza's like 25 miles long and seven miles wide, in that tiny area, there are 350 miles of tunnels. Imagine that, you know, just crisscrossing at every level. Israel didn't really have an adequate sense of that. And I'm writing, working a column today about Israel beginning to think about an endgame that doesn't obliterate Hamas, that may not be possible, but begins to develop alternative non-Hamas governance in Gaza, which means turning to the people Netanyahu hates, or the Palestinian Authority.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  But there are a lot of Israelis, especially in the IDF, who think that's the only way to go. I share that with you.

• 44:58Scott Galloway?

  How do you think this thing, if you were to try and play it out, and you've written about, okay, what is, what about the day after? How, if you had to speculate, this plays out, and then what does it look like after there's some sort of resolution?

• 45:17Speaker 05

  So I think the first thing is to realize that Rafa, in a sense, has been overplayed by both sides. Israel does not, at present, have the military forces for an all-out assault on Rafa. This is more noise than it is an actual attack plan. Every time the US says, "We don't think you should attack Rafa," Netanyahu seems to think, Prime Minister Netanyahu, seems to think he has to say, "I'm gonna attack Rafa." But there aren't those plans at present.

• 45:55Speaker 05

  People in the IDF agree with people in the US government that doing this carefully, not necessarily in a rush, makes sense. And they understand, more to the point, that unless you've thought clearly about how you're gonna maintain order, once you've cleared Rafa, you're not gonna kill every Hamas fighter in Rafa, just as they didn't kill every Hamas fighter in Gaza City or Khan Yunis. They're still there, a lot of them. But they're not strong enough to threaten Israel. And if you create an alternative security presence, they're probably not strong enough to dominate Gaza going forward.

• 46:35Speaker 05

  A lot of Gaza Palestinians, I know from my reporting, do not like Hamas. So I think people are finally beginning to think about the day-after issues. Like, what does stability look like in the long run, in a way that is better for Israel, is better for the Palestinians? And that's... Turning the page to that point has taken seven months, but that's where things ought to be. So, just say one final personal thing. I've been covering the Middle East a long time. I think Hamas has done enormous damage to the Palestinians. I think having sympathy for Hamas just doesn't make sense to me, given how they've operated. I think having sympathy for the Palestinian people and their suffering or aspirations

• 47:20Speaker 05

  for statehood and dignity is entirely appropriate. But I... Israel's goal of making sure that Hamas never governs Gaza again, I think that's something that makes sense, makes sense for everybody, especially the Palestinians.

• 47:37Scott Galloway?

  Well, just a couple, a couple of theses, and you responded them. One, I don't think a two-state solution, which I think most people agree is, is a decent goal, is possible with either Netanyahu or Hamas in charge. Do you agree with that?

• 47:50Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 47:52Scott Galloway?

  And you said about having empathy and sympathy for the residents of Gaza. I mean, right now, it's got the greatest concentration of child amputees in the world. I mean, it's, it's horrific. And a lot of people, I've talked a lot about this issue, and a lot of people say, Scott, you need to differentiate between antisemitism and being, you know, being anti-Israel and being antisemitic. And I think that's a fair statement, because my understanding is about Netanyahu is about 30% support. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of people in Israel that are kind of anti the current Israeli leadership. Where I don't think there's as much sharp relief, as people say, you can have a lot of empathy for Palestinians and

• 48:35Scott Galloway?

  be anti Hamas, because my understanding is, I want to be clear, people, children, people under the age of 18, victims, humanitarian aid should absolutely, we need to protect it, make sure it gets there. But my understanding is Hamas actually has still a great deal of support among the Palestinian people. And that a lot of these houses that the IDF goes into have connections to tunnels, weapons, pictures of Hamas leaders that, you know, just as we held the German people accountable for the Third Reich, is there really that much light in between the Palestinian people and Hamas?

• 49:15Speaker 05

  So I think there's enough, enough light and distance that equating the two, and it's essentially imposing collective punishment on the Palestinians is wrong morally, and it's also wrong strategically. It's a guarantee for unending conflict. You're just not, I mean, you're not gonna kill all the Palestinians. They may, they may hate you, but you've got to find a way for them to have stable governance, and, you know, gradually over time, things change. The US, in fact, held, held the Nazi party responsible for what happened in Germany.

• 49:53Speaker 05

  The Japanese war machine responsible for their war, but didn't hold the people of those two countries responsible. And indeed, tried to help from a very early moment when the war ended, to help those people begin to develop prosperity, democratic political systems. And today, to me, Japan and Germany are among the most successful democratic countries I know, precisely because we didn't impose collective punishment on the people. And, you know, I've spent, I've been covering this, Scott, for way too long, since 1980, forty, almost forty-five years. I've lived in a Palestinian village.

• 50:35Speaker 05

  I went back to visit that village in December, just to see the people who'd taken me in. And I'll say a couple of things about them. One interesting thing about the West Bank is it hasn't blown up during this nightmare war. Everybody was afraid it would, but it hasn't. Why? Well, partly Palestine is, you know, Israel's sitting on them hard. But they don't want the disaster that Hamas brought to Gaza to happen to them. I may be naive in thinking that there's a way to a successful two-state solution. I know it'll take years. I know that both countries are really far from it.

• 51:17Speaker 05

  But I also know that if you don't start now, you're just gonna be stuck. I've watched Israel and Palestine stuck in this misery for too long. I want it to move to a different place. I try, and I try to explain in my journalism, how you do that? And spend the time going village to village in the West Bank, just to make sure I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy to think that you could get to something better. And so that's, that's what my reporting tells me.

• 51:47Scott Galloway?

  For the purposes of pushback, and also not to prove a point, but to learn here. I have a tremendous respect for your domain expertise. And I am, try to keep an open mind about this. But when you say that we didn't hold the German and the Japanese people accountable, I would push back. We killed three and a half million Japanese, including 100,001, night. Five and a half million Germans were killed by the Allies, including, we continued to bomb on Hamburg and Dresden well beyond when it had strategic objective other than convincing them that they needed to know that they lost. And then, holding the Palestinian people, the way you're framing it is that the Israelis are taking a more, what I'd call, inhuman approach to the Palestinians than the Allies did in World War II.

• 52:32Scott Galloway?

  And I disagree with that. And they're dropping leaflets, they're leaving voicemails. My sense is that they are doing their best to try and root out the combatants who Hamas, you know, are using civilians as ammunition. Why is it you think that Israel is holding Palestinians to greater account than the Allies held the Germans or the Japanese? I don't see the data to support that.

• 52:57Speaker 05

  So, I take your point that during that all-out fight in World War II, the United States killed a lot of German and Japanese civilians. The United States' position nominally was to reduce, to limit civilian casualties. Unlike the British, that were conducting strategic bombing of Germany, meaning hitting cities. The US position was, let's hit military facilities. But that got blurred, and I don't disagree in any way that the killing was horrific. There's evidence, Evan Thomas's new book about the road to surrender with Japan,

• 53:40Speaker 05

  it makes clear that Truman and Stimson thought that they were choosing a military target in Hiroshima. It wasn't. The aim point was right in the middle of town, killing civilians. But they thought, they convinced themselves that they had ruled out what the military wanted to do, which was bomb Kyoto and shatter the symbol of Japanese culture and civilians there. And they avoided that. So, are we holding Israel to a different standard than we followed ourselves? Maybe.

• 54:22Speaker 05

  You know, we live in a different time when you see war on your TV every day in a way you didn't during World War II. It's immediate and present and visceral. I've talked a lot to people in the IDF, you know, I've known... Covered Israel for all these decades. I have very good longstanding contacts in IDF. And I asked them, what accounts for the high level of civilian to Hamas casualties? And by most estimates, I know these Israelis are pushing back on this, but by estimates

• 54:59Speaker 05

  of US intelligence, the ratio is unusually high and well beyond what we imposed in after some time in Iraq and Afghanistan. So what accounts for that? What's going on? And when I asked that question, IDF, IAF, Israeli Air Force, officers tell me about their rules of engagement, about the algorithms they use to try to reduce civilian casualties. But then they also tell me about the overrides that exist. I just, I look at these numbers, Scott, and I think too many civilians have died relative to the number of fighters. More than was necessary.

• 55:42Speaker 05

  It's not to say that Israel is unique in that, doing things different from what the US did during World War II. I'm not taking issue with that. But could they have done this differently? Could they do it differently right now as they plan the Rafa operation? Could they think carefully about how to reduce civilian suffering and death in this next phase? That's what the US has been saying. And I think that that's the right question to ask. And I don't think that's a double standard at all. It's standard. So things that are being done, I just define a point. You know, Israelis were blocking corridors of humanitarian assistance. They are not the IDF.

• 56:26Speaker 05

  The IDF is opening them up. There were police units reporting to right-wing members of this governing coalition who closed those corridors, and the IDF came in and opened them. Because they know it's not in Israel's strategic interest to do this. The IDF hate settler violence in the West Bank. You know who the biggest enemy of that is? The IDF. Because they've got to keep the lid on. And these crazy settlers who blow down from the mountain tops and, you know, go on wearing masks and kill people in what they say are revenge attacks. That drives the IDF crazy.

• 57:04Scott Galloway?

  And tell me if you think this is an unfair question, but I want to pose it anyways because you, you really do sit at the intersection of warfare and DC and geopolitics. But the scenario I always imagine is a jihadist or radical cartel is elected to lead Mexico. And they incur into Texas under the auspices of you have been demonic to migrants. You've been putting our kids in cages. And it's based on this flawed blasphemous ideology called evangelical Christianity. And we have an obligation to our God to come in and we've gotten aid and we've been spent

• 57:47Scott Galloway?

  years building tunnels underneath the Texas-Mexican border. We come in and this might be fair or unfair, but on a per capita basis, kill about 30,000 Americans and then take 5,000 back and hide them in tunnels under Mexico. And the question I always ask is what would we do? And I believe our response would make Israel's response look gentle. Is that fair?

• 58:15Speaker 05

  I don't think it is entirely fair. I'm just thinking about the wars that I've watched. There was a nightmarish problem of ISIS violence that was sweeping across the Middle East. Just truly horrific pornographic violence, just crazy ways of killing people.

• 58:33Speaker 05

  You know, subjugating women in particular to beastly conditions. And the US decided to fight back. So how did we do that? Well, the first thing we did was to get an ally, a local ally. The one thing we didn't do adequately in Iraq or Afghanistan. But we got people who were prepared to fight and die to do the, do the operations on the ground. And so the first thing you think about with Mexico was there'd be a lot of people who would be potential allies and you'd want to work with them. And then we thought about the need to move slowly and carefully. So that the shaping of the operations against ISIS took months.

• 59:17Speaker 05

  People wondered, what the heck is the US doing? Why, why is it taking so long? I remember I was able to go into Syria with the Special Operations Command repeatedly. I kept thinking, why are we going faster? And the reason was to, to shape it carefully so that when, when you, when you went in, it'd be quick and decisive. So they went in, the capital of ISIS was Raqqa. They didn't take Raqqa. They, they got all around it. They began recruiting tribes that, that had roots in Raqqa. They took the town next to Raqqa called Tabka. They staged operations to, to squeeze. They began to get the civilians out of Raqqa. So that the people in Raqqa mostly were the, the fighters.

• 1:00:02Speaker 05

  So when we say, um, there's a better way to do this than the way you're doing it, we have some authority in making that claim. So how do we deal with Mexico? I mean, I don't know. But I mean, the right answer surely is we ought to find a way in that nightmare, hypothetical scenario you described, to do a better job than Israel tragically.

• 1:00:31Speaker 05

  You know, with the greatest sympathy for the dilemmas they faced than they did, because too many people died. We might be forced into that same situation. We might kill an equivalent number of people, but I hope we wouldn't have to, that we'd be smarter, and I hope Israel will be smarter.

• 1:00:49Scott Galloway?

  David Ignatius is a prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and has been covering the Middle East and the CIA for more than four decades. He's also written several New York Times bestsellers, including The Increment, Body of Lies, and Blood Money. His latest novel, Phantom Orbit: A Thriller, is out now. He joins us from his home in northwest Washington. David, I could have gone two hours here, and I really do appreciate your measured, thoughtful view on these things and the way that you add texture. I found this really interesting, and I learned from it. Appreciate your time.

• 1:01:23Speaker 05

  I enjoyed the conversation, too. They were tough questions.

• 1:01:28Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 1:01:33Speaker 06

  Running a small business means I wear lots of hats. When I put on my hiring hat, I can count on LinkedIn Hiring Pro to make it easy. LinkedIn Hiring Pro helps manage my hiring workflow, puts my job post in front of a unique network of professionals, and matches me with the best candidates for my business. I can also share my job with my network. No other job site lets me do that. No wonder most small businesses say they'd use LinkedIn Hiring Pro again. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free on LinkedIn today at LinkedIn.com/quality.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior-like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit MichelobUltra.com/SupiorAccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev. Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:02:34Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Nutraful, the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand used by over one and a half million people. When you get to the stage of life where you start to notice hair loss, you have a few options. You can shave it all off and enjoy your new look, or you can commit to a new team whose logo you wouldn't mind constantly spotting on a hat, or you can actually restore some of your hair's former glory with Nutraful. Nutraful has formulas built for men at different life stages, such as Nutraful Men for guys aged 18 to 49, or the new Nutraful Men 50 and older. It's the first product of its kind specifically made for men over 50. You can address the key root causes of thinning wherever you are in life. Grow visibly thicker, fuller hair in three to six months. Start Nutraful today and make the hat optional.

• 1:03:18Scott Galloway?

  Visit nutraful.com and enter promo code PROVGE for $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. Find out why Nutraful is the best selling hair growth supplement brand at nutraful.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com, promo code PROVGE. That's nutraful.com promo code PROVGE.

• 1:03:50Scott Galloway?

  Algebra of happiness. I think a lot about drinking and alcohol. I love alcohol and I've said I'm good at it. It makes me, you know, I'm a slightly better version, or actually probably a tangibly better version of me, a little bit fucked up. I'm more emotive, I'm more affectionate, I'm funnier, I'm more engaged under the influence of alcohol. And I know how terrible that sounds. I have decided to start reducing my intake of alcohol because whenever I do a physical and they ask me how many drinks a week I have, I figured out I'm drinking about a bottle of Maker's Mark every one and a half to two weeks, which just can't be good for you. And then after listening to about 10 minutes of Peter Attire, Andrew Huberman, it's clear I might as well be, I don't know,

• 1:04:35Scott Galloway?

  guzzling a gallon of Clorox bleach the way they describe it. So I'm trying to take down my alcohol intake for selfish reasons for my own health. Well, here's another reason I want all of us dads to think about reducing our alcohol intake.

• 1:04:50Scott Galloway?

  I went out Friday night with a friend. I went to the premiere of Mad Max Furiosa. I went afterwards to Chiltern Firehouse, which is the coolest room in London. When I say cool, great lighting, hot people, great drinks, great service. I just absolutely love it there. And I went with my friend and I had two Makers and Ginger. And I've been trying to limit my alcohol intake. As a matter of fact, right after doing ketamine, I didn't like the smell of alcohol and I tried to lean into that and started ordering grapefruit juice and soda and really liked that. But now I'm toddling back and starting to drink again. See Above Charming Scott. And then at two, I thought, okay, I'm gonna get my wheelie and get out of here. But I had a third. And then,

• 1:05:31Scott Galloway?

  so I'm feeling really good. And I am watching my sons this weekend and my oldest is staying at boarding school, my youngest. And so I'm fucked up. Okay, fine. I go home, go to sleep. I get up. I sleep in an hour, two hours later than I would because See Above, I'm fucked up and I'm hungover. I get up. I just want to have greasy food. I take another nap. I want to take my son and the dogs out for a walk. My son is being, not difficult, he's being what a 13 year old is. He's being a 13 year old. So I don't get them out for a walk. I let the dogs out in the backyard. And basically, we go the whole day without doing anything. The bottom line is shitty

• 1:06:12Scott Galloway?

  dad. Shitty dad. And what I'm gonna do, and I want dads to think about, is I'm not saying stop drinking. What I'm saying is, at some point, does it make sense to stop chasing it? That's what I do when I drink. I think, wow, I love the way this makes me feel. I love this atmosphere. I'm gonna do number three, maybe number four. And I start chasing that feeling. And real maturity, I think, comes from the notion of, okay, I love the idea. I love the idea and the concept, and I've tried to always do this, of leaving a little too early. A little too early. I love that. I've done that in businesses. I've started businesses and when they're jamming,

• 1:06:56Scott Galloway?

  I sell them or I leave. And I think it's okay to leave the stage while everyone is applauding. I like that. Modulate, leave a little early from social environments and, and don't have the third drink, don't have the fourth drink. Wake up at a reasonable hour the next morning. Don't be fucked up. Don't be hung over. Be the dad you want to be. We're not going to chase it. We're going to think about what would it require? Would it really take that much discipline to leave an hour earlier, to have one or two fewer drinks and then be up an hour, two hours earlier and be totally engaged in what you're supposed to be engaged

• 1:07:36Scott Galloway?

  in on the weekends? The weekends are no longer about nursing your hangovers and recovering from the shitty health impacts of alcohol. It's about nourishing your relationship with your son.

• 1:07:52Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Caroline Chagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Jew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prof G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show.

• 1:08:14Scott Galloway?

  Lot of riffing, lot of humor, lot of insight, lot of daddy, lot of Papa Dog, lot of markets. Even the non sequiturs were elegant, yet generous, yet moving. Oh my God, what did I eat today? How do I recreate this? How do we bottle a little daddy? How do we bottle today's daddy? Put a label on it and become billionaires. Billionaires, Jennifer, you need a jet. How do we bottle this? How do we bottle this? Let's start a podcast.

• 1:08:52Speaker 07

  They're running a cover two defense, but you're running to get game day deals on Uber Eats. Keep everyone at tonight's watch party fed with deals from your go to restaurants or stock up with deals on your favorite snacks and groceries. Whatever the occasion, get game day deals on Uber Eats all season long. It's not football without food. Uber Eats. Order now. Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

• 1:09:22Speaker 08

  Booking.com is the easiest way from a day surrounded by noise.

• 1:09:35Speaker 08

  To a state surrounded by nature.

• 1:09:41Speaker 08

  That's nice. Go on, book it. It's easy. Booking.com. Booking dot yeah.