#316 – Noam Chomsky: Putin, Ukraine, China, and Nuclear War

Noam Chomsky is a linguist, philosopher, and political activist. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Skiff: https://skiff.com/lex – InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off – Onnit: https://lexfridman.com/onnit to get up to 10% off – Blinkist: https://blinkist.com/lex to get 25% off premium EPISODE LINKS: Noam’s Website: https://chomsky.info/ Noam’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/noam.chomskyofficial Manufacturing Consent (book): https://amzn.to/3KaEc0d PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) – Introduction (07:28) – Putin’s motivations (20:35) – War in Ukraine (27:37) – Propaganda (35:01) – China and American relations (50:02) – Hope for humanity

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

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Noam Chomsky, his second time on the podcast. This episode is focused on the war in Ukraine. And it is a departure from the way I usually do this podcast in several ways. Noam is a strong and healthy 93-year-old, but this conversation is remote to be cautious. It is brief, only one hour. It is more of an interview than a conversation due to the limitations of our audio and video connection. I decided it's best to get Noam's clear thoughts on this war and the complicated geopolitics of today and the rest of the 21st century that is unrolling before us, with our decisions

• 0:43Lex Fridman?

  and actions fully capable of either helping humanity flourish or unleashing global destruction and suffering. As a brief aside, perhaps you know this, but let me mention that I traveled to Ukraine and saw, heard, felt things that are haunting and gave me a lot to think about. Because of that, I've been really struggling to edit the videos I recorded. I hope to finish it soon. I'm sorry for these delays, and I'm especially sorry to the people there who gave me their time, their story, their heart. Please be patient with me. I hope you understand. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.

• 1:28Lex Fridman?

  We've got Skiff for email, Insight Tracker for longevity, Onnit for supplements, and Blinkist for nonfiction. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle because I hate those. They break the flow of the conversation. Some of my favorite podcasts do them. It is what it is. That's life. I deal with it. But now, because I have some control where the ads, or a lot of control where the ads on this podcast go, even if I lose money, I care not, my friends. I am first and foremost just a fan of podcasts, so I get to do this podcast in the way that I like to listen to podcasts as a fan. So, there it is.

• 2:10Lex Fridman?

  But if you skip the sponsors, which I make super easy for you, apparently,

• 2:16Lex Fridman?

  please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. It really is the best way to support this podcast. This show is brought to you by Skiff, a private end-to-end encrypted email. I just read like a blog post about them somewhere. This is not a very kind of informative head read. I read a blog post about Skiff, how they're revolutionizing a lot of aspects of email, that they're doing incredible job. I've been using Skiff for a while for document collaboration, for email. They got all kinds of features, fast search. You can do custom domains for the email and you can migrate from whatever the email service you use,

• 3:00Lex Fridman?

  like Gmail, Proton Mail, or Outlook. Man, it's been a while since I opened up Outlook. I used it for a while for the most shady of emails, but I think Outlook

• 3:13Lex Fridman?

  is used quite a lot in the sort of business sector and the professional sector. So if you're one of those folks, you should move, upgrade to the end-to-end encryption and the really easy, powerful, accessible interface of Skiff. So sign up at skiff.com/lex. That's S-K-I-F-F dot com slash lex. This show is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data. They got blood data, DNA data, fitness tracker data, all that kind of stuff. They shove it all in into a machine learning algorithm and then make predictions for what you should be doing with your life. Of course, in a way that protects your privacy, in a way that gives you control over that data.

• 3:55Lex Fridman?

  But I would love it if some of the aspects of my life were all integrated to where I can have an advisor. How I should allocate my effort throughout the day in order to be most optimal. How to maximize my wellbeing, how to manage things like social media access. I just feel like My body has a lot of data about my well-being. And the software I use doesn't have access to any of that data. It just seems like that those two things should be connected. And InsideTracker is really pushing towards that direction of using data from your body to give lifestyle changes advice for you.

• 4:39Lex Fridman?

  It's personalized. Get special savings for a limited time when you go to inside tracker.com/lex. This episode is also brought to you by Onnit, a nutrition, supplement and fitness company. They make AlphaBrain, a nootropic that helps support memory, mental speed and focus. When my life is going great, the thing I start with every single day is a deep work session. So I spend several hours just really focusing on a difficult task. Now, some part of that is coffee. Some part of that is just the clarity in the morning with water, with some electrolytes in it. And then if I just need an extra boost, whether the session is difficult

• 5:22Lex Fridman?

  or I didn't get enough sleep, I just need that extra boost. I'll take an AlphaBrain right before to give me that extra mental clarity and focus. And I think the start, I would say the first 15 minutes is the hardest. If you can achieve focus over the first 15 minutes, the world starts to dissipate away. And all it is, is just you and the task. Anyway, you can get a special discount on AlphaBrain at lexfridman.com/onnit. This show is also brought to you by Blinkist, my favorite app for learning new things. It takes key ideas from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them down into 15 minutes that you can read or listen to.

• 6:07Lex Fridman?

  Sapiens is on there, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is on there. Beginning of Infinity by David Doach is on there. I really have to talk to David Doach. I was in London briefly. To hang out with DeepMind folks and that fell through. But yeah, I definitely want to talk to him. Such a brilliant human being. Anyway, if you don't know any of his work, this is a good way to get into it. You get a quick summary and you get to see if you want to read the whole thing. Also, if you already read Beginning of Infinity, you can use Blinkist to remind yourself of the key sort of ideas in there. And sometimes not even just remind. Maybe your mind was focused on particular aspects of that book and totally missed the key central ideas.

• 6:50Lex Fridman?

  So that kind of integrative summarization of a text is really, really useful no matter what. You can claim a special offer for savings at blinkist.com/lex. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Noam Chomsky.

• 7:28Lex Fridman?

  You have studied and criticized powerful leaders and nations in times of global conflict and struggles for power. So let me ask you, what do you think motivates Vladimir Putin? Is it power, legacy, fame, geopolitical influence, or the flourishing of a nation he loves and represents?

• 7:49Noam Chomsky?

  I have no particular insight into Putin's mind. I can only watch the actions over the last 20, 25 years and read the statements. Took power about almost 25 years ago, has held it since as prime minister, president. His first task was to try to overcome the...

• 8:23Noam Chomsky?

  Chaos and disarray of the 1990s. During the 90s, Gorbachev had a proposal. He called for a cooperative enterprise with the West. They would share an effort to rebuild what he called a "common European home", in which there would be no military alliances, just Russia, Western US accommodation,

• 9:01Noam Chomsky?

  with a move towards social democracy in former USSR and comparable moves in the United States. Well, that was quickly smashed. The United States had no interest in that. Clinton came along pretty soon, early 90s. Russia was induced to adopt what was called shock therapy, harsh, quick market transformation,

• 9:38Noam Chomsky?

  which devastated the economy, created enormous social disarray, rise of what are called oligarchs, kleptocrats, high mortality. And Clinton started the policy of expanding NATO to the East in violation of firm, unambiguous promises to Gorbachev not to do so. Yeltsin, Putin's friend, opposed it. Other Russian leaders opposed it, but they didn't react. They accepted it. When Putin came in, he continued that policy.

• 10:23Noam Chomsky?

  Meanwhile, did reconstruct the Russian economy. Russian society became a viable, deeply authoritarian society, under his tight control. He himself was a...

• 10:39Noam Chomsky?

  Organized a major kleptocracy with him in the middle. He nearly became very wealthy. On the international front, he pretty much continued the former policies. As U.S. diplomats, practically every diplomat who had any contact with Russia had been dispatched there or knew about it, as they all warned from the 90s, that what Clinton was doing, spanned by his, by Bush, Bush too afterwards, was reckless and provocative, that Russia

• 11:18Noam Chomsky?

  did have a clear red line before Putin, which he adhered to, namely, no NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. This is pretty much how things went on through the 2000s, 2014. 2008, George Bush, President Bush, did invite Ukraine to join NATO. That was vetoed by France and Germany, but under U.S. pressure, it was kept on the agenda. The Russians continued to object.

• 11:58Noam Chomsky?

  Western diplomats, including the present, current head of the CIA and his predecessors, warned that this was reckless, provocative, shouldn't be done. Continued Putin didn't do much. He stayed with it until pretty recently. After 2014, uprising that threw out the former president, who was pro-Russian, instituted anti-Russian laws.

• 12:34Noam Chomsky?

  The United States and NATO began to a policy of moving to effectively integrate Ukraine into the NATO command. Joint military exercises, training, sending weapons, and so on. Putin...

• 12:56Noam Chomsky?

  objected, other Russian leaders objected, they're unified on this, but didn't do much. Continued with the proposals that NATO, that Ukraine be excluded from NATO. And that there be some form of autonomy for the Donbass region. Meanwhile, in reaction to the uprising, the Mida uprising 2014. Russia moved in and took over Crimea, protecting its one warm water base and major naval base.

• 13:39Noam Chomsky?

  US objected and recognized it, but things continued without notable conflict. Won't go through all the details, when Joe Biden came in, he expanded the program of what US military journals call defective integration of Ukraine within NATO.

• 14:05Noam Chomsky?

  Developed in September 2021, proposed enhanced program of preparation for NATO admission. Extended with a formal statement in November. We're now practically up to the invasion. Putin's position hardened. France, mainly France, to an extent Germany, did make some moves towards possible negotiations. Putin dismissed them, moved on to the direct invasion.

• 14:47Noam Chomsky?

  That's what are his, to get back to your question, what motivates him? I presume what he's been saying all along. Namely, establishing his legacy as a leader who overcame the.

• 15:08Noam Chomsky?

  Extensive destruction of Russia and massive weakening over it restored its position as a world power, prevented Ukraine from entering NATO. It may have further ambitions as to dominating and controlling Ukraine, very likely. There is a theory in the West that he suddenly became a total madman who wants to restore the great Russian empire. This is combined with the gloating over the fact that the Russian military is a paper tiger that can't even conquer cities,

• 15:52Noam Chomsky?

  a couple of kilometers from the border, but defended not even by a regular army. But somehow, along with this, he's planning to attack NATO powers, conquer Europe, who knows what. It's impossible to put all these concepts together. They're totally internally contradictory. So, what's my judgment? I think what motivates him is what he's been demonstrating in his actions. Restore Russia as a great power, restore its economy, control it as a total

• 16:36Noam Chomsky?

  dictatorship, enrich himself and his cronies, establish a legacy as a major figure in Russian history, make sure that Ukraine does not join NATO, and probably by now he's hardened the position, maintain Crimea and the southeastern corridor to Russia, and some ambiguous agreements about the Donbass region. That looks like his motivation. There's much speculation

• 17:15Noam Chomsky?

  that goes beyond this, but it's very hard to reconcile with the assessment of the real world by the same people who are making the grandiose speculations.

• 17:32Lex Fridman?

  Putin has been in power for 22 years. Do you think power has corrupted him?

• 17:39Noam Chomsky?

  I don't think anything's changed. It seems to me his policies are about the same as what they were. They've changed in response to changed circumstances. So, very recently, right before the invasion, a few weeks before, for the first time, Putin announced recognition of the independence of the Donbass region. That's a stronger position than before, much stronger. Up till then, he had pretty much kept to the longstanding position of some kind of accommodation within a federal

• 18:21Noam Chomsky?

  structure in which the Donbass region would have considerable autonomy. So, that's a portioning of the position.

• 18:30Lex Fridman?

  So, even the human mind of Vladimir Putin, the man?

• 18:34Noam Chomsky?

  I can't read his mind. I can only see the policies that he's pursued and the statements that he's made. There are many people speculating about his mind. And as I say, these speculations are, first of all, not based on anything. Never said anything about trying to conquer NATO. But, more importantly, they are totally inconsistent with the analyses of Russian power by the same people who are making the speculations. So, we see the same individual speculating about Putin's

• 19:15Noam Chomsky?

  grandiose plans to become Peter the Great and conquer, start attacking NATO powers. On the one hand, saying that. On the other hand, gloating over the fact that his military powers so miniscule, they can't even conquer towns a couple of miles from the border. It's impossible to make sense of that position.

• 19:44Lex Fridman?

  Why did Russia invade Ukraine on February 24th? Who do you think is to blame? Who do you place the blame on?

• 19:53Noam Chomsky?

  Well, who's to blame? Any power that commits aggression is to blame. So I continue to say, as I have been for many months, that the invasion, Putin's invasion of Ukraine, is on a par with such acts of aggression as the US invasion of Iraq, the Stalin-Hitler invasion of Poland, other acts of supreme international crime under international law, aggression, of course, is to blame.

• 20:34Lex Fridman?

  The US committed 6.9 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since the Russian invasion. Should US keep up with this support?

• 20:44Noam Chomsky?

  There are two questions. One has to do with providing support for defense against the invasion, which is certainly legitimate. The other is seeking ways to end the crime before even worse disasters arise. Now, that second part is not discussed in the West, barely discussed. Anyone who dares to discuss it is immediately subjected to a flood of invective and hysterical condemnation. But if you're serious about Ukraine, there are two things you ask.

• 21:25Noam Chomsky?

  One, what can we do to support Ukraine in defense against aggression? Second, how can we move to end the war before it leads to even worse destruction of Ukraine, more starvation worldwide, reversing the efforts, the limited efforts, to deal with global warming, possibly moving up in escalation out of the war?

• 21:53Noam Chomsky?

  The nuclear war, that's the second half of the borrow a phrase attributed to Winston Churchill. There's a lot of war, war, but no joy, jaw, joy. And there ought to be jaw, joy if you care about Ukraine and the rest of the world.

• 22:16Noam Chomsky?

  Can it be done? We don't know. Official US policy is to reject a diplomatic settlement, to move to weaken Russia severely, so that it cannot carry out further aggression, but not do anything on the jaw, jaw side, not think of how to bring the crimes and atrocities to an end. That's the second part of the question. So, yes, the US should continue with the kind of calibrated support that's been given. The Pentagon wisely has vetoed

• 23:04Noam Chomsky?

  initiatives to go well beyond support for defense up to attack on Russia. So for the Pentagon, which seems to be the dovish component in the US administration, has vetoed plans which very likely would lead on to nuclear war, which would destroy everything. So calibrated provision of weapons to blunt the offensive, allow Ukraine to defend itself. If sensible, combined with efforts to see if something can be done to bring the crimes and atrocities to an end

• 23:48Noam Chomsky?

  and avert the much worse consequences that are in store. That would be all instead the US only dealing with the first. And all of our discussions limit themselves to the first in the United States and in Britain, not in Europe.

• 24:06Lex Fridman?

  Do you worry about nuclear war in the 21st century? How do we avoid it?

• 24:12Noam Chomsky?

  Anyone who doesn't worry about nuclear war doesn't have a gray cell functioning. Of course, everyone is worried about nuclear war, or should be. It's very easy to see how steps could be taken. They've even been recommended that would lead to nuclear war. So you can read articles even by liberal commentators who say we should uh drop all the pretenses, just go to war against Russia, they have to be destroyed. Uh, uh, you can see proposals coming from Congress. The other leading figures saying we should establish a no-fly zone.

• 24:56Noam Chomsky?

  Pentagon objects, they point out correctly that to establish a no-fly zone, you have to have control of the air, which means destroying Russian air defense systems, which happen to be inside Russia. Uh, we don't know that Russia won't react. Uh, even the call now almost universal to ensure that Ukraine wins, drives out all the Russians, drives them out of the country. Sounds nice on paper, but notice the assumption. Uh, the assumption is that Vladimir Putin, this madman who's

• 25:42Noam Chomsky?

  just seeks power and is out of control, will sit there quietly, accept defeat, slink away, not use the military means that of course he has to destroy Ukraine. One of the interesting comments that came out in today's long article, I think Washington Post reviewing a lot of leaks from, uh, actually, not leaks, actually presented by US intelligence and US leaders about the long buildup to the war. Uh, one of the points it made was surprised on the part of British and US leaders

• 26:25Noam Chomsky?

  about Putin's strategy and his failure to adopt to fight the war the way the US and Britain would. With real shock and awe, destruction of communication facilities, of energy facilities and so on, they can't understand why he hasn't done all that. Well, good. If you wanna make it very likely that that'll happen, then insist on fighting until somehow Russia faces total defeat, then it's a gamble, you know. But if he's as crazy and insane as he claimed, presumably will use weapons that he hasn't

• 27:09Noam Chomsky?

  used yet to destroy Ukraine. So the West is taking an extraordinary gamble with the fate of Ukraine, gambling that the madman lunatic, Mad Vlad, won't use the weapons he has to destroy Ukraine and set the stage for escalation of the latter, which might lead to nuclear war. It's quite a gamble.

• 27:37Lex Fridman?

  How much propaganda is there in the world today, in Russia, in Ukraine, in the West?

• 27:43Noam Chomsky?

  It's extraordinary. In Russia, of course, it's total. Ukraine is a different story. They're at war. Expect propaganda. In the West, well, let me quote Graham Fuller, very highly placed in US intelligence, one of the top officials for decades, dealing mostly with Russia and Central Asia. He recently said that in all the years of the Cold War, he's never seen any extreme Russia phobia to the extent that he sees today. I think that's pretty accurate.

• 28:30Noam Chomsky?

  I mean, the US has even canceled Russian outlets, which means if you want to find out what Sergei Lavrov or the Russian officials are saying, you can't look it up on their own outlets. You have to go through Al Jazeera, Indian state television, or someplace where they still allow Russian positions to be expressed. And of course, the propaganda is just outlandish. I think Fuller is quite correct on this. In Russia, of course, you expect it.

• 29:14Noam Chomsky?

  Total propaganda, there's nothing, any independent outlets, such as there were, have been crushed.

• 29:24Lex Fridman?

  If the media is a source of inaccuracies and even lies, then how do we find the truth?

• 29:31Noam Chomsky?

  I don't regard the media as a source of inaccuracies and lies. They do exist, but by and large, media reporting is reasonably accurate. Reporters, the journalists themselves, as in the past, do courageous, honest work. I've written about this for 50 years. My opinion hasn't changed, but they do pick certain things and not other things. There's selection, there's framing, there's ways of presenting things.

• 30:15Noam Chomsky?

  All of that forms a kind of propaganda system, which you have to work your way through. But it's rarely a matter of straight outright lying.

• 30:28Lex Fridman?

  So there's a difference between propaganda and lying?

• 30:31Noam Chomsky?

  Of course. A propaganda system shapes and limits the material that's presented. It may tell the truth within that framework.

• 30:44Noam Chomsky?

  So let me give you a concrete example, which I wrote about extensively. I have a book called Manufacturing Consent jointly with Edward Herman. It's about the, his term, which I had accepted, the propaganda model of the media. A large part of the book is defense of the media. Defense of the media against harsh attacks by Freedom House. Several volumes they published attacking the media, charging that the media were so adversarial and dishonest that they lost the war in Vietnam.

• 31:25Noam Chomsky?

  Well, I took the trouble of reading through the two volumes. One volume is charges, the next volume is evidence. Turns out that all of the evidence is lies. They had no evidence. They were just lying. The media, in fact, were doing, the journalists were doing an honest, courageous work, but within a certain framework. A framework of assuming that the American cause was basically just, basically honorable, making mistakes, doing bad things, but all, but the idea of questioning that the United

• 32:10Noam Chomsky?

  States was engaged in a major war crime, that's off the record. So unfortunately, there was this crime and that crime, which harmed their effort to do good and so on. Well, that's not lying, it's propaganda.

• 32:29Lex Fridman?

  So how do we find the truth?

• 32:32Noam Chomsky?

  How do we find the truth? That's what you have a brain for. It's not deep. It's quite shallow. It's not, it's not quantum physics. Put little effort into it. Think about, look for other sources. Think a little about history. Look at the documentary record. It all pretty well falls together and you can get a reasonable understanding of what's happening.

• 33:02Lex Fridman?

  If you could sit down with Vladimir Putin.

• 33:06Lex Fridman?

  And ask him a question or talk to him about an idea. What would you say?

• 33:12Noam Chomsky?

  I would walk out of the room, just as with almost any other leader. I know what he's gonna say. I read the party line. I read his pronouncements. Doesn't want to hear from me. Am I gonna say, why did you carry out a crime that's comparable to the US invasion of Iraq? And the Stalin Hitler invasion of Poland? Am I gonna ask that question?

• 33:39Noam Chomsky?

  If I met with John F. Kennedy today, would I ask, why did you radically escalate the war in Vietnam? Launch the US Air Force? Start, authorize an A-bomb? Drive, launch programs to drive villagers who you know are supporting the National Liberation Front, drive them into concentration camps to separate them from the forces they're defending? Would I have asked him that? Of course not.

• 34:14Lex Fridman?

  Do you think the people who led us into the war in Vietnam?

• 34:19Lex Fridman?

  The war in Afghanistan and Iraq?

• 34:23Lex Fridman?

  The war in Ukraine?

• 34:26Lex Fridman?

  Are evil?

• 34:28Noam Chomsky?

  I mean, it's very hard to be in a position of leadership of a violent, aggressive power without carrying out evil acts.

• 34:42Noam Chomsky?

  Are the people evil?

• 34:45Noam Chomsky?

  I mean, I'm not their moral advisers. I don't know anything about them. I look at their actions, their statements, their policies. Evaluate those. Their families can evaluate their personalities.

• 35:01Lex Fridman?

  Will there be a war between US and China in the 21st century?

• 35:06Noam Chomsky?

  If there is, we're finished.

• 35:10Noam Chomsky?

  Okay. A war between the US and China would destroy the possibilities of organized life on Earth. In fact, we can put it differently. Unless the US and China reach an accommodation and work together and cooperatively, it's very unlikely that organized human society will survive. We are facing enormous problems. Problems. Destruction of the environment. Endemics. Threat of nuclear war. None of these.

• 35:53Noam Chomsky?

  Decline of democratic functioning of an arena for rational discourse. None of these things have boundaries. We either work together to overcome it, overcome them, which we can do, or we'll all sink together. That's the real question we should be asking. What the United States is doing is not helping. So, current US policy, which is perfectly open, nothing secret about it, is to, what's called, encircle China. It's the official word. With sentinel states. South Korea. Japan.

• 36:38Noam Chomsky?

  Australia. Which will be heavily armed. Provided by Biden with precision weapons aimed at China. Backed by major naval operations. Huge naval operation just took place in the Pacific. Many nations participating, Rim Bank, didn't get reported here as far as I know. But an enormous operation threatening China. All of this to encircle China. To...

• 37:16Noam Chomsky?

  Continue with policies like that. Somebody like Pelosi, just to, probably to make her look more, I don't know what, what her motives are, taking a highly provocative, stupid act, opposed by the military, opposed by the White House. Yes, acts like that, which of course called for the response of highly dangerous. We don't have to do that. We don't have to increase the threat. I mean, right now, the last NATO summit, take a look at it, for the first time, it invited

• 38:00Noam Chomsky?

  to attend the countries that are in the Sentinel States, surrounding China, encircling China from the east.

• 38:11Noam Chomsky?

  And it in fact extended the range of NATO to what's called the Indo-Pacific region. So all of us, by now, the North Atlantic includes the whole Indo-Pacific region, to try to ensure that we can overcome the so-called China threat. Certainly, we might ask exactly what the China threat is.

• 38:38Noam Chomsky?

  It's done sometimes. So, former Prime Minister of Australia, Paul Keating, well-known international diplomat, had an article a while ago in the Australian press, that's right in the claws of the dragon, asking, going through what the China threat is. He ran through the various claims, finally concluded, the China threat is that China exists.

• 39:08Noam Chomsky?

  It exists, it does not follow US orders. It's not like Europe. Europe does what the United States tells it to do, even if it doesn't like it. China just ignores what the US says. Now, there's a formal way of describing this. There are two versions of the international order. One version is the UN-based international order, which theoretically we subscribe to, but we don't accept. The UN-based international order is unacceptable to the United States because it bans US foreign policy. Literally.

• 39:53Noam Chomsky?

  It explicitly bans the threat or use of force in international affairs, except under circumstances that almost never arise. Well, that's US foreign policy. Try to find a president who isn't engaged in the threat or use of force in international affairs. Okay, so obviously, we can't accept the UN-based international system, even though, under the Constitution, that's the supreme law of the land. It doesn't matter. So, the United States has what's called a rule-based international order.

• 40:34Noam Chomsky?

  That's acceptable because it's the United States that sets the rules. So, we want a rule-based international order where the US sets the rules. In commentary in the United States, even in scholarship, almost 100% calling for a rule-based international order.

• 40:58Noam Chomsky?

  Is that false? No, it's true. Is it propaganda? Of course it's propaganda. Because of what's not said and because of what's presupposed. An answer to an earlier question. Well, China does not accept the rule-based international order. So when the US imposes demands, Europe may not like them, but they follow them. China ignores them. So take, for example, the US sanctions on Iran. The US has to punish Iran because the United States pulled out of the,

• 41:40Noam Chomsky?

  unilaterally pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreements. So in order to punish Iran for wrecking the agreements in violation of Security Council orders, we impose very harsh sanctions. Europe strongly opposes the sanctions, condemn them harshly, but it adheres to them. Because you don't disobey US orders. That's too dangerous. China ignores them. They're not keeping to the rule-based international order. Well, that's unacceptable.

• 42:24Noam Chomsky?

  In fact, it's said pretty openly. You can hear the Secretary of State and others saying that China is challenging our global hegemony. Yes, they are. They don't accept US global hegemony, especially in the waters off China. So that's a China threat. They do a lot of rotten things, China. I mean internally, there's all kinds of repression, violence, and so on. But first of all, that's not a threat to us. And second, the US doesn't care about it because it easily accepts and supports comparable crimes and atrocities internal to allies.

• 43:07Noam Chomsky?

  So, yes, we should protest it, but without hypocrisy. We have no standing to protest it. We support comparable things in all sorts of other places. And just take a look at the US Foreign Aid. The leading recipient is US foreign aid is Israel, which is engaged in constant terror, violence and repression, constant, almost daily. Second leading recipient is Egypt, under the worst dictatorship in Egypt's history. That's 60,000 people in jail, political prisoners, tortured and so on, to be cared about. Second leading recipient.

• 43:53Noam Chomsky?

  I mean, what are we talking about? That's why the most of the world just laughs at us. There's a lot of failure to understand here about why the global south doesn't join us in our proxy war against Russia, fighting Russia until it's severely weakened. They don't join us. Here, the question is, what's wrong with them? They look into their minds to figure out what's wrong. They have a different attitude. They say, yes, we oppose the invasion of Ukraine, terrible crime. But what are you talking about? This is what you do to us all the time.

• 44:38Noam Chomsky?

  You don't care about crimes like this. That's most of the global south. We can't comprehend that because we're so insulated that we are just obviously right and everyone who doesn't go along must be wrong.

• 44:55Lex Fridman?

  Do you think the United States as a global leader, as an empire, may collapse in this century?

• 45:03Lex Fridman?

  Why and how will it happen? And how can we avoid it?

• 45:06Noam Chomsky?

  The United States can certainly

• 45:12Noam Chomsky?

  harm itself severely. That's what we're doing right now.

• 45:18Noam Chomsky?

  Right now, the greatest threat to the United States is internal. Countries tearing itself apart.

• 45:28Noam Chomsky?

  I mean...

• 45:31Noam Chomsky?

  I really don't have to run through it with you. Take a look at something as elementary as mortality. The United States, the only country. Outside of war, life expectancy is declining. Mortality is increasing. This doesn't happen anywhere. You take a look at health outcomes generally. They're among the worst among the developed societies. And health spending is about twice as high as the developed societies. You look at the charts. All of this starts around the late 1970s, early 80s. To that fact, if you go back to that point.

• 46:14Noam Chomsky?

  The United States was pretty much a normal developed country. In terms of mortality, incarceration, health expenses, other measures. Since then, the United States has fallen off the chart. It's gone way off the chart. Well, that's the neoliberal assault of the last 40 years. It's had a major effect on the United States. It's left a lot of anger, resentment, violence. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has simply drifted off the spectrum. It's not a normal political party in any usual sense, not what it used to be.

• 46:58Noam Chomsky?

  Its main policy is block anything in order to regain power. That's its policy. Stated almost openly by McConnell. Followed religiously by the entire, the entire Congress. It's not, that's not the act of a political party. It's, so of course, democracy has declined. Violence has increased.

• 47:29Noam Chomsky?

  The judgments, the decisions of the Supreme Court, very, the court's the most reactionary court in memory, to go back to the 19th century. So, decision after decision is an effort to create a country of white supremacist Christian nationalists. I mean, scarcely hidden, if you read the opinions of Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and others. So, yes, we can destroy ourselves within, and in fact, the ways we're doing it are almost astonishing.

• 48:13Noam Chomsky?

  So, it's well-known, for example, everybody knows that US infrastructure, the bridges, subways, and so on, is in terrible shape, needs a lot of repair. The American Association of Engineers gives it a failing mark every year. All right, finally, Congress did pass a limited infrastructure bill, say, rebuild bridges and so on. It has to be called a China Competition Act. We can't rebuild their bridges because they're falling apart. We have to rebuild their bridges to beat China. It's pathological.

• 48:55Noam Chomsky?

  And that's what's happening inside the country. Take Thomas's decision in the recent case in which he invalidated a New York law, this is last October, a couple, one, a couple of weeks ago, invalidated a New York law going back to 1913, that required people to have some justification if they wanted to carry concealed weapons in public. He was through that with a very interesting decision.

• 49:33Noam Chomsky?

  He said, "The United States," he said, "is such a decaying, collapsing, hateful society that people just have to have guns." I mean, how can you expect somebody to go to the grocery store without a gun in a country as disgusting and hideous as this one? It's essentially what he said. Those weren't his words, but they were the import.

• 50:03Lex Fridman?

  What gives you hope about the United States, about the future of human civilization?

• 50:11Noam Chomsky?

  Human civilization will not survive unless the United States takes a lead, a leading position in dealing with and overcoming the very severe crises that we face. The United States is the most powerful country, not only in the world, but in human history. There's nothing to compare with it. What the United States does has an overwhelming impact on what happens in the world. When the United States pulls out a loan, pulls out of the Paris agreements

• 50:52Noam Chomsky?

  on dealing with climate change and insists on maximizing the use of fossil fuels and dismantling the regulatory apparatus that provides some mitigation, when the United States does that, as it did under Trump, it's a blow to the future of civilization. When Republican states today, right now, say they're gonna punish corporations that seek to take the climate change into account in their investments, the US is telling the world, "We want to destroy all of us."

• 51:37Noam Chomsky?

  Again, not their words, but their import. That's what they mean. So as long as we have a political organization dedicated to gaining power at any cost, maximizing profit, no matter what the consequences, no future for human civilization.

• 52:00Lex Fridman?

  Noam, thank you for talking today. Thank you for talking once again. And thank you for fighting for the future of human civilization. Again, thank you.

• 52:12Noam Chomsky?

  Thank you.

• 52:15Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Noam Chomsky. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Voltaire. "It is forbidden to kill. Therefore, all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.