#465 — More From Sam: Iran, Jihadism, Conspiracism, AI Disruption, the Manosphere, and More

In this latest episode of the More From Sam series, Sam and Jaron talk about current events. They discuss the Iran war and the Trump administration's shambolic messaging, antisemitism and moral confusion on the left and right, the spread of conspiracism, finding contentment in uncertain times, AI's looming disruption of white-collar work, wealth inequality and the ultra-rich's failures of philanthropy, Louis Theroux's documentary on the manosphere, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe http://samharris.org/subscribe.

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

• 0:06Sam Harris?

  Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Welcome back to another episode of More From Sam. I just want to remind everybody, we are taping this live in front of subscribers, and we've had them submit questions in advance of the show. And then we've asked them to provide any follow-ups using the chat feature so that we can try to have Sam, you, address their feedback in real time. All right, let's get on to our first topic. I want to start with Iran again. Last time, we discussed holding two thoughts in our heads at the same time. One, you thinking it was right to get rid of the Iranian regime, and two, that you were worried that we were being led by an incompetent administration. How are you feeling at this moment?

• 1:07Sam Harris?

  Well, I think that sort of two-fold impression has only solidified. Certainly, the incompetence has been on display, and the consequences of the initial incompetence. I mean, the initial incompetence was to have done absolutely nothing to prepare the American people or Congress for this war, to have lurched into it in an authoritarian way, to have given fuel and even seeming evidence to conspiracy theorists who think we were dragged into it by Israel. I mean, I'll acknowledge that Israel and America don't have precisely the same set of concerns and incentives in this war, right? So it's rational to differentiate between Israel's needs and America's. I mean, I think that's, to some degree, that's true. So we could talk about that.

• 1:49Sam Harris?

  And, yeah, so there's no clear rationale for the war. Trump has said all manner of thing as a reason for us doing this, and has been totally unpersuasive. Strangely, he has a communication problem that's almost at the level of Biden's during his presence. I mean, Biden's massive failing as a president, you know, among his many minor failings, is that he couldn't communicate at a certain point, he couldn't communicate at all about anything, and he just simply had to hide from the public for, you know, obviously neurological reasons. Well, I don't know what Trump's reasons are, but Trump is totally ineffective in communicating about this because he either doesn't know anything,

• 2:32Sam Harris?

  you know, or he's content to be completely incoherent, or doesn't notice that he's incoherent, but he's just, the messaging has been terrible. And in the run-up to this, we've done nothing but alienate our allies with tariffs and threats and bullying and, you know, authoritarian nonsense. And now that we need allies, surprisingly, right, to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, apparently we want our allies to help us do that. That comes as a surprise to many people. I'm not sure it should have, but it seems to have come as a surprise to Trump because at one point, Keir Starmer offered a British ship, I believe, or two or three, and Trump said, no, no thanks. We don't need someone who's coming in too late to a war

• 3:12Sam Harris?

  that's already been won. And now he's bullying Starmer to give the ships that he actually needs, right? So it's just, it is the most unprofessional, slipshod, shambolic messaging around this. And so one can only hope that the actual dropping of bombs is being executed with real precision and, you know, impressive competence. I have no reason to believe it isn't. But so it's just, it's totally reasonable to be worried that we could screw this up. I don't have, you know, I'm not confident we will screw this up. I mean, I think I will be unsurprised if this turns out to be a success, despite all of these malapropisms. I think it could be a success, right? We could wake up one day to realize that there's

• 3:56Sam Harris?

  a, you know, a secular democracy being born in Iran because we destroyed this evil regime, and it's what the bulk of the Iranian people really wanted all the while, right? And so we could stumble into real success here, and that's certainly to be hoped. Hoped for, but it could also be a ghastly failure about we could produce something like a failed state in Iran. And that will seem to vindicate all the people who were against this war in the first place. And the one other thing I would point out is that most of the people who are against this war are not making the most basic acknowledgement of the evil of the Iranian regime and the needless misery of the Iranian people. Right. So they're not connecting the humanitarian dots that they really should connect to be sane critics of this war.

• 4:41Sam Harris?

  I mean, the first thing you have to say, if you're going to criticize this war is to acknowledge that this is an evil regime that would, it would be better if it didn't exist. And your, your, your heart goes out to the Iranian people who don't want to live under this miserable theocracy. But you have these further reasons to worry that this adventure is a very bad idea. And that's, there's an argument to be had there. I mean, Damon Linker just published a Substack article that made that case. And, you know, I thought fairly persuasively, but still, most critics of this war don't do that. And they're just, they sound completely delusional to me.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I mean, you did point out that Trump went to war without NATO and now he's telling them, uh, you know, hey, you, you guys are the one that needs the oil. So, uh, you, you, uh, you know, get in here to the Strait of Hormuz.

• 5:22Sam Harris?

  Yeah. But worse than that, he, he's also saying that we need the help, right? Like we, we actually couldn't do this on our own, it seems, right? I mean, now it remains to be seen whether that's going to be true, but there is this perception that we, we have already gotten in over our heads. Despite how much we have pulverized the regime, right? I mean, the evidence of that is pretty remarkable. But the fact that, I mean, we either appeared not to have anticipated how easy it is or how asymmetrical the threat is in the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, how is it like, well, you know, one guy in a fishing boat with a suicide vest could close the whole thing down, you know, or just was one.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I think it's a little bit more.

• 5:59Sam Harris?

  One person laying mines. No, it's, I mean, it's very, it's totally asymmetrical, apparently. I mean, you really need, you can't let one person with one mind have access to the water. Otherwise no one's going to send a ship through, right? And, and now we're in this awful position of watching the Iranians dictate who can come through the strait, right? So, you know, Iranian oil and Chinese ships are happily passing through the strait, apparently. And we're letting that happen because. We don't have control. So it is, that part appears to be a humiliating failure in the making. I think I would, I would also add that if at the end of all of this, there hasn't been regime

• 6:39Sam Harris?

  change and the Iranian people are still under the boot of theocrats and we're now left to try to negotiate with some religious fanatic who perhaps is pretending not to be a fanatic about their, you know, the existing, you know, 400 kilograms of partially enriched uranium that they still have and their, their aspirations to spin up more. I think that will be just an objective failure, right? It would be better not to have, as much as we have degraded the regime, that would be bad for the US. I'm not so sure it'd be bad for Israel in the same way. Maybe, maybe everything from here forward, no matter what happens, is a success from Israel's point of view. Again, we don't have quite the same interests there.

• 7:22Sam Harris?

  But simply because Iran, you know, a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel. There's no question. So pulverizing the regime, degrading their capacity, killing their ballistic missile regime, if only that, right? That's, that's a good.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Has that been confirmed? Has that been, that's been confirmed that the nuclear facilities have been pulverized? I mean, I know they, they claimed that last time.

• 7:46Sam Harris?

  No, but the ballistic missiles, the, the conventional missiles have been either eradicated or they've shot their last one, it seems. I mean, they really, it really seems that they're, they don't have much capacity left. All of that's good for Israel. That's neither here nor there really for the US. I'm just, I'm just saying that we, the way we went into this and the incompetence that surrounded so many features of this from our side, not, not Israel's side. If at the end of the day, there really is no fundamental reset in Iran and we're just left still trying to negotiate on some level around their nuclear aspirations, I think that's a terrible outcome, right? So that, that's to worry, worth worrying about.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. You've said you don't want Iran to get a nuke, but you've also said that you don't want American boots on the ground. If push comes to shove, wish, are you willing to let go of?

• 8:33Sam Harris?

  The boots on the ground part. I just said that we can't have jihadists with nukes. I mean, that's just you that you can boil down the core of a sane foreign policy on this topic to that sentence, right? If it's a jihadist regime that is within reach of nukes, send in the troops, right? Do whatever you have to do to stop that from happening, right? So how we do that, I mean, again, we should have allies. We should have gone to Congress. We should have made the case for this. And I think, you know, I've always said, and I think I first got this idea from the Atlantic writer, Mark Bowden, I think, you know, maybe 20 years ago. It seems to me that much of this should be covert, right? I don't know. I don't know why we ever have to take credit for anything. I think we're at war with jihadism, full stop.

• 9:19Sam Harris?

  We will be for the rest of our lives. Anyone who doesn't understand how jihadism is different from any other enemy we have or really have ever had, doesn't understand jihadism. So, I mean, it makes an absolute mockery of any negotiation, any notion of deterrence. I mean, to say nothing of nuclear deterrence. You're dealing with avowedly suicidal people who are not bluffing. And they're not only so it's not, it's not only that they're willing to die. The crucial quorum of them want to die, right? And if you don't believe that, again, you're simply ignorant about jihadism and haven't been paying attention to the last, you know, 25 years at least of what's been happening in the world. So it's a total deal breaker. It nukes with jihadists, just that cannot happen, right? So wherever it seems to be happening, we need to send in the troops, whatever that

• 10:04Sam Harris?

  looks like, whether that's robots in the end, or special forces, or some combination of, you know, many things that are, that seem different from our old misadventures with that were just boots on the ground. That's fine, but we need, we need a relentlessly intrusive policy with respect to jihadism and nuclear projects.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm trying to read this chat here that just came in. Says, uh, people in the chat are pushing back on Sam earlier, saying that he has no reason to believe the bombs aren't being dropped accurately, even though the Trump admin is leading the war. How about the girls' school getting bombed?

• 10:38Sam Harris?

  Well, obvious, obviously, I'm not talking about the, the girls' school. So yes, that was a catastrophe and obviously a mistake, right? I mean, anyone who thinks we did that on purpose is a moron. So, I mean, you literally need not listen to another word out of the mouth of anyone who's speaking as though that was intentional, right? That, that harms our interests as closely as, as anything we could possibly do. And so, and the same is true of Israel. So the, the idea that that's somehow part of our policy to kill school girl, girls by the hundreds, that's insane, but it's awful that that happened and it was clearly based on some error of, you know, intelligence or targeting or both. But generally speaking, where, I mean, we and the Israelis have killed so much of the leadership of the regime.

• 11:22Sam Harris?

  I mean, it's, that part sounds like it's out of some unbelievable movie. And it sounds like we're, we are successfully degrading their capacity in all kinds of ways, but not sufficient to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, right? So that part, if that was surprising to us, that's another sign of our incompetence.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I just think that the, the real issue there is, I don't think most people really believe we did it on purpose. I think it's the mismanagement and just why it was so difficult just to say, yeah, yeah, we, of course, we, what you just said, we would never have done that on purpose. It was accidental. We, you know, this is tragic.

• 11:57Sam Harris?

  Well, yeah, the messaging around this, we're in the hands of, of amoral, you know, truly awful human beings who are running our country, right? And that has a consequence, right? Trump can't credibly step in front of a microphone and say anything compassionate about anything for any purpose, right? Because everyone knows that he's simply, he's at minimum neurologically injured in some way so that, so it's not to be a normal person in that regard. And so it is with, you know, Pete Hegseth and the other cartoon characters who are in our government. So all of that's terrible, right? I mean, there's no, I mean, you're not going to get to the back of me. Feeling that that these are the wrong people to be doing this very important and risky job.

• 12:40Sam Harris?

  But that doesn't suggest that destroying this regime wouldn't be a good thing. And the other thing to point out about critics of this war is they never seem to reckon with the the widespread Iranian support for the war. What are you going to say? What can you say to all the Iranians who are urging us onward in destroying this regime? Right? I mean, what about their interests? What about the compassion for their loved ones who don't want to live in a theocracy? Right? Which you, the critic of this war, wouldn't want to live under either. People are acting as though we attacked a sovereign country. They're acting as though we attacked Greenland, right? Like, that's the perception of the ethics here.

• 13:24Sam Harris?

  I mean, this is just a totally unjustifiable, unethical, imperialist adventure by a, you know, country that is now governed by a sociopath, right? Now, we may be governed by a sociopath, but all of the previous statements are wrong, right? This is nothing like Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This is nothing like our taking Greenland through use of force. The Iranian regime was a terrorist regime for as long as most of us have been alive. And some feedback from the chat, if, um, isn't the war just creating more jihadists? No, I've never bought that. I mean, yes, I'm sure there are some specific individuals who could tell that story of their radicalization. I mean, I'm not saying that's an impossible way for the dominoes to fall.

• 14:08Sam Harris?

  But generally speaking, that's not how you get jihadism, right? You get jihadism by the indoctrination into a specific, you know, religious beliefs. And and those beliefs spread, right? People find those beliefs compelling for a variety of reasons. And if no other reason that they're just, they get drummed into the heads of kids since the moment they can speak, right? So this is what's happened among the Palestinians, right? I mean, the Palestinians are a highly radicalized culture because they have taught.

• 14:40Sam Harris?

  More than one generation of kids that this is the way the world is, right? I mean, you literally have four-year-olds being raised to aspire to be martyrs. You know, this is in the curriculum in UN-funded schools in the Palestinian territories. So it's just, it's a cultural problem. It's a religious problem. It's a theological problem. It's a problem that the Muslim world has to sort out. I mean, because the real problem is jihadism is not a distortion of the faith. It's just, it's at the core of the faith. I'm not saying that all Muslims are jihadists, but there, it is hard to do the rhetorical work to disavow jihadism and pull it up by its roots and still sound like you are an orthodox Muslim. I mean, it's very, it's not, it's not an easy project. I'm not even sure it's a viable project in the end.

• 15:24Sam Harris?

  So I'm not, I'm definitely worried about this slow-moving collision we are going to keep having with, with Islamic orthodoxy. But we should point out that fairly doctrinaire Muslims are still trying to do it, even in states that are not at all democratic or open. So you know, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, I mean, they're disavowing their hard-line clerics and I believe ceasing to export jihadism the way they were. I mean, Saudi was funding jihadist-inspired mosques all over the world for the longest time. I believe they have reined that in, or at least that's been reported. All of those changes are good and so, and those changes are possible.

• 16:04Sam Harris?

  And it's pretty clear that the UAE doesn't want to become a, an ISIS-like society. And all of that's good. But the problem is there's a very obvious place to stand within Islam to look at the UAE project and say, well, this is all just worldliness and corruption and apostasy. And the real Islam teaches exactly what the Islamic State has been saying all along, and we have to deal with that.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Speaking of that, is that true information? Is it the UAE that no longer is funding college education to the UK for fear of radicalization?

• 16:36Sam Harris?

  Yeah, they're afraid that their students will be radicalized by the Muslims at Oxford and Cambridge and the London School of Economics, which tells you just how far this problem has spread. So, you know, convict the UAE of Islamophobia, if you like. That will be amusing.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. It seems many on the right and left are united against this war for different reasons, obviously, but which sides' reasons were you more?

• 16:59Sam Harris?

  I think the left's, frankly. I mean, the right's, the America First dogmatism of the right and the antisemitism, the anti-Israel position of the right is, it is what it is. I mean, it's easier for me to take the measure of. What's on the left is just fundamental moral confusion about everything I just said, right? I mean, they won't acknowledge that jihadism is even a problem. I mean, everything I just said is just pure Islamophobia and racism, as though that charge made any sense. I mean, the left is, the left has been galled by Islamists. The left has, I mean, we've got people who jihadists would actually massacre if they

• 17:38Sam Harris?

  had a chance, essentially championing the cause of jihadists, right? On our most elite university campuses, you know, in a wide variety of organizations, you know, left of center in the West. But the level of moral confusion is just astounding. So, these are, the useful idiots are on the left. I guess there's some useful idiots on the right for other reasons, but I don't know. Just, again, the asymmetry here is worth noting. On the right, you know, the cultural capture on the left has been of our most elite institutions, right? The moral confusion you see is in places like the New York Times and at Harvard

• 18:18Sam Harris?

  University and, you know, foundations and, you know, it's just the employees of, of, you know, all high-status companies. I mean, this is, it's not, we're not talking about Breitbart and, and Fox News and organs of culture that advertise their confusion with every breath. These are our best institutions that have been vitiated by this form of antisemitism, this form of moral confusion, this form of apology for a theocracy and atrocity. I mean, if you walk through the front door of a mainstream liberal, liberal organization and start arguing for the rights of women and girls in the Muslim world, you are immediately

• 18:58Sam Harris?

  painted as a racist Islamophobe, right? That's the center of gravity, left of center in, again, our most elite institution. So, that's just, that's god-awful.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  How do you explain that? What, I mean, what do you think they would say if you just pointed that out to them and said, "Let me just explain to you what life is like under that rule." Does that bother you?

• 19:16Sam Harris?

  Well, I've been in this situation before. I've been for 25 years. I've found myself in these conversations face to face ever since September 11th. It's been a long time since I've submitted to one in person. But no, I mean, I would be at academic conferences and I would say something disparaging of the Taliban and that proved controversial, right? I mean, it's just, you literally meet-

• 19:39Speaker 01

  And if you tried to walk somebody on the other side through this logic?

• 19:42Sam Harris?

  Yeah, you get just an utter stonewalling and kind of malfunctioning of the human brain. I mean, it becomes impossible to have the conversation. I mean, they're just, yeah, it's just, there's a double standard etched into this pseudo morality, which is, it's like there's, the utility function is here, I think, see everything in terms of white supremacy and oppressor oppressed relationships and avoid racism at all costs, right? That's kind of the master value. And so, any criticism of Islam, even of theocrats, even of theocrats who are killing women for showing their hair, even theocrats who are performing genital mutilation

• 20:25Sam Harris?

  on girls, if you criticize them, you are at a minimum risking being racist. Again, that makes no sense, that claim. And certainly Islamophobic, right? So, that's where the conversation stops. We can't care about those girls. We can't care about those women. Your pretension to care about those girls and women is just a cover for your racism and Islamophobia. And as a white guy, you can't be talking about this at all, anyway, right? So, the conversation's over before it starts. And these are the most maddening encounters I've ever had in my life. Literally had conversations with women who have PhDs, who are, you know, who live happily in the West, who are open-minded about, you know, female genital mutilation

• 21:07Sam Harris?

  and the life of women in burkas in Afghanistan. It's just, it's mind-boggling.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Okay, so you're getting pushback from the chat. Mainstream progressives do not believe that stuff, Sam.

• 21:16Sam Harris?

  I've met them face to face.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  With the extreme left.

• 21:18Sam Harris?

  Okay, so, well, then we're just talking about words. So then, show me your mainstream progressive who isn't going to think the last 15 minutes was just a, an iructation of Islamophobia. Uh, and then I'll grant that that person's sane. But just in, in the ledger of your imagination, imagine all the people who think that what I just expressed was white identity politics, or racism, or Islamophobia. Right? Anyone who's, who, who, who will, who'll check any of those boxes? That's who I'm talking about. Are those, are those mainstream progressives or not?

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know. Should we, uh, let's just, uh, pause for a second. Just, uh, do we want to see if that person would like to lay out the, the view a little bit more clearly? So that you can respond to it?

• 22:02Sam Harris?

  Oh, yeah, I would, I would love any follow up on that. I mean, I just, it's like, either you're going to understand what jihadism is, and you're going to understand the complicity of confused leftists and Muslim apologists, who are not themselves jihadists, but, you know, many of whom are Islamists, and many of whom are just sufficiently conservative and identified with their, you know, religious sectarianism, such that they're going to criticize the Danish cartoonists who are being hunted by maniacs, not the maniacs who are hunting them. Right? They're going to, you know, when the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist gets slaughtered in their conference room, their first question is going to be, well, what were those cartoons? What did they draw? Right? Yeah. So I'm talking about people like Glenn Greenwald.

• 22:44Sam Harris?

  It's a very large footprint in our culture of confused people.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  All right, well, unfortunately, the person has decided that they do not want to give a follow up. But if anybody else in the audience, yeah, if anybody else in the audience, um, you'd be helping us here, actually, if you could, um, represent that viewpoint.

• 23:01Sam Harris?

  Well, so, there's no way I can satisfy everyone in, in the audience on this point, because I, I've, I recognize that on some level, it's not about rational argument, because we're not, we're not going to agree about what is real in the world. Right? So if I, the moment I say, okay, jihadists can't get nuclear weapons, and here is why, what I'm dealing with, with a significant Percentage of the audience is people who think that jihadists only exist in my imagination. Right? Like there's no, there really are no people who think they're going to get to paradise by blowing themselves up on an airplane. That's not real. These people are either mentally ill or they have other motives. You know, they've been so mistreated by the Israelis or by Western powers, or there's some other explanation.

• 23:44Sam Harris?

  It's not religion. It's not sincere belief in paradise. So insofar as I can't land that argument with some number of people, those people will never accept anything else I have to say on this topic. But those people are delusional, right? I mean, they're just simply, they're not in contact with what's really happening in our world. And this has been obvious, at least since September 11th, but it was obviously obvious long before that.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Well, while we're waiting to see if we're going to get any feedback, speaking of delusional, I want you to play. I'm sorry, I want you to watch a clip of a meme video released from the White House. I don't know if you've seen these. Kirby, can you load that for us to watch?

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Have you seen this?

• 24:32Sam Harris?

  I haven't seen this one, but I've seen ones like this. Yeah. This is obviously appalling.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't need to keep watching any further. You get it.

• 24:45Sam Harris?

  So I mean, so this is the kind of thing that totally discredits us morally. And that wasn't even the worst one. I've seen ones that were even more offensive than that. But I mean, how does that look alongside our inadvertently killing over a hundred kids in school? I mean, there's, there's, there's no apology adequate for this behavior. These people belong in prison. I mean, if we don't have laws against being this stupid and odious, we should. I mean, it's just, I can't believe this is our country, right? I mean, that's the official White House X feed. There's no, there's no forgiveness for this. I mean, this is just an absolute desecration of our country on the world stage.

• 25:25Sam Harris?

  I mean, this is a Trump and basically all of the loyalists who at this point, who are in his administration, have just set fire to our reputation, to American soft power and to our influence in the world, to our moral standing, such as it was. I mean, it's just, I don't know how long it'll take us to get back to zero on this front, but it might not happen in the lifetime of anyone listening to us.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Well, in your replacement for that comment that I've been waiting on, I think I've selected a question from earlier, so we can just jump to that, which I think, you know, might address some of it. I've often appreciated the way you bring nuance and moral clarity to difficult topics, which is why I've been surprised by what seems to me like a lack of similar nuance in your analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the broader regional escalation with Iran. You argue that groups like Hamas and regimes like Iran represent a uniquely dangerous ideology that may justify extraordinary measures to stop them. What principle in your moral framework actually limits the violence that can be used against such an enemy? And at what point would you say the response itself has become morally unacceptable, regardless of the ideology of the opponent?

• 26:34Sam Harris?

  Well, there's a certain amount of collateral damage that is unacceptable, clearly. Like, so, you know, in the limit, I don't advocate that we blow up the entire world so as to kill all the jihadists, right? So there's some place between a sniper's round targeted into the head of the appropriate target and killing everyone on earth that I'm going to land as, okay, this is, this is starting to seem like too much collateral damage in our efforts to purge, you know, our world or any given society of its jihadist threat. I don't know what the algorithm is to decide that in advance, right?

• 27:14Sam Harris?

  I mean, I think we, we have to be as careful as we can possibly be while still successfully defeating our enemies when we're at war. One can only hope that better technology is going to make us more and more careful and more and more precise and that, you know, previous degrees of collateral damage will begin to seem less and less unconscionable in, in current and future wars, because again, it becomes possible to be more careful and more precise. I mean, I don't think we could fight a war the way we fought World War II now, because it would be wrong. I mean, it would, it was, in retrospect, it would, much of what we did, at least by some accounts, looks wrong.

• 27:56Sam Harris?

  But, I mean, I could imagine under, you know, a certain case of emergency, we'll... You know, we could stumble into even a less surgical type of war because of the nature of the enemy. I mean, that this is what's so troublesome about nuclear weapons, right? And the and the logic of mutually assured destruction. I mean, we're living in a world where we're pretending that it's thinkable because it is actually policy that if we find that Russia has launched a first strike against us, we are going to return fire, killing, you know, whatever, tens of millions of people at a minimum, but perhaps, you know, hundreds of millions of people for no purpose. Right? That's the deterrence, right? That that is the nature of our deterrence doctrine. This is we will launch, if launched

• 28:38Sam Harris?

  upon. That doesn't make any moral sense to me, actually. I don't see that. But it's the only thing that gives deterrence its reality psychologically, right? The fact that the the suspicion, or at least the uncertainty as to whether or not we'll do that, right? The claim that we will do it and the uncertainty as to whether or not we're bluffing. All of this goes completely out the window in a world where jihadists have have nukes, by the way. So it's like this is the only reason why nuclear deterrence is a thing at all, is because all parties who have nukes, in fact, don't want to die and don't want to see their children die. That's what makes mutually assured destruction a doctrine that plausibly kept us perched on the brink, not having a nuclear war, which

• 29:20Sam Harris?

  is in fact, what has happened so far, and probably not having a conventional war because of the risk of escalation to nuclear war. So you could even argue that this awful circumstance where the sword of Damocles is hanging over everybody's head, kept us out of World War, a conventional version of World War III so far. And that's a good thing. That only makes sense if your enemy doesn't want to die, and you're convinced your enemy doesn't want to die. And in the case of even crazy enemies, like the various autocrats who have ruled North Korea, you know, each of the three I can think of seemed to be nuts. They weren't nuts in the way that suggested that they want to die. Right? But the moment

• 30:02Sam Harris?

  we're in the presence of someone who can reach us with nukes, who we're convinced really does want to die. Right? And he's surrounded by people who want to die because they are in fact jihadists, you know, they're a proper death cult. That changes everything. Right, so we can't let ourselves get into that situation. And crucially, the Muslim world has to recognize that they can't let the world get into that situation. I mean, no one has a greater appreciation of this than Muslims, right? So it's not going to be news to real Muslims who understand the doctrine that jihadism is a thing and a sincere belief in martyrdom in paradise is a thing, right? This is only confusing to Western secular liberals who think that, you know,

• 30:45Sam Harris?

  even suicide bombers on some level may be bluffing. No, so we have to foresee this and avoid it. And the only way to avoid it is to ensure that jihadists continue to lose. And this goes back to the question earlier of, am I afraid that we simply make more jihadists every time we intrude into a Muslim society and kill them? Well, no, I think the thing that really makes jihadists is the perception of jihadist success. Right, the thing that really created a lot of jihadists was the rise of ISIS and the birth of the Islamic State. I mean, the announcement that there was a caliphate, right? I mean, there you saw the jihadists and aspiring jihadists come out of the woodwork.

• 31:30Sam Harris?

  And some tens of thousands of them flocked to Syria and Iraq to join the party, even from Western countries, right? Islamic triumphalism gives you jihadism, right? So jihadists have to lose, right? It has to be, it has to be obviously a failed project. And the only people that can make it truly in the limit, a failed project, are other Muslims, right? I mean, this is why, you know, honestly, we need a civil war in the Muslim world against jihadism. That's the thing that will have to happen ultimately. We need, we need a version of Islam that will not tolerate this species of fanaticism. And that may, that may be coming. I mean, I'm certainly hopeful that that is coming because that's, that's the only thing

• 32:13Sam Harris?

  that is not, that doesn't, I mean, I'll grant you that having a Western face on this, a non-Muslim face on this, having the infidels show up and start killing your fellow Muslims, that's provocative for obvious religious reasons. So in the end, it has to be other Muslims who are fighting jihadists.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  You don't think there's any safety in your thinking around, you know, the higher up these guys get, the less likely they are to want to die and maybe they're just sending their underlings. But I mean, is there any example of anybody at the highest levels wanting to die and exhibiting that?

• 32:43Sam Harris?

  Well, yeah, I mean, I think even in this case, that many of these people haven't taken the kind of precautions they would take if they cared about whether they were dying or not. I mean, this is, you know, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, he clearly had the courage of his convictions. I mean, he's not, he's not somebody who's maximizing his chances of, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't taking a plane out to so that he could sit in a villa somewhere and ride it out. We overestimate the pleasure of being rich and gluttonous and safe. If we think that in every case, you know, having access to a good life is a remedy for jihadism.

• 33:24Sam Harris?

  It's just not, I mean, people, these are sincere religious beliefs and sincere concerns about the existential peril of not being right with God, right? This is, there's one, there's one way to get into paradise directly and bypass the day of judgment. If you're Muslim, it's to be a martyr. This is not a trivial thing within Islam. And yeah, so I mean, just, you know, you have to price in the sincerity of these beliefs. People really believe this stuff. Now, can you find a jihadist who's actually mentally ill? Of course, can you find a jihadist who was, was only led there because, you know, someone said they were going to kill his mom if he didn't, you know, strap on a suicide vest? Sure, I'm sure those cases exist, but jihadism is real.

• 34:09Sam Harris?

  It's a real religious movement. You know, if you say, if you want to separate it from mainstream Islam, fine, then call it what it is. It's a legitimate death cult, you know, that has extreme, an extreme set of beliefs about the moral structure of this universe and how to live within it and what happens after death and what's going to happen, you know, at the end of days and what you have to do in the meantime to be right with all of that. I mean, this is always heavily prescriptive and it's sincerely believed by, we don't know how many numbers of people, but a non-trivial number.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Okay, I want to get to a next question. I and many of the other commenters want to hear an intelligent and in-depth nuanced conversation about the Israel-Palestine issue, an intellectually honest conversation, even if very challenging for you and for the listeners. Some months ago, in a coda to an episode, Jaron and Griffin strongly and respectfully argued for having a guest who could speak from a deep well of understanding about the Israel-Palestine issue. You agreed to look for a guest who has extensive understanding of the issue and who is also aware of the dangers of jihadism. How is that search going? There are a number of writers and historians. Let's hear the names.

• 35:14Sam Harris?

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