WW3 DEBATE: “We’re On the Brink of Global Collapse” - #1144

In this geopolitical debate, we explore: What the biggest threats to global peace are. Whether America will lose its hegemony in 20 years or less. How big of a deal the Iran War actually is for global stability. How future historians will view Trump's legacy. And much more... Guests Professor Jiang Xueqin is an educator, geopolitical commentator, and YouTuber. Robert Pape is a political scientist and professor at the University of Chicago. George Friedman is a geopolitical forecaster, strategist, and author. Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a free trial from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠https://chatgpt.com Timestamps: (00:00) Is America the Biggest Threat to Global Peace? (09:52) Will America Still Be a Superpower in 20 Years? (23:22) What Does America’s Relationship With China Look Like? (32:21) Who Will Be the Biggest Superpower in 20 Years? (37:16) Is America Heading for Civil Unrest? (42:45) The Rise of Violent Populism (47:57) Is Internal Violence in America Inevitable? (57:09) What the 1960s Teach Us About Civil Unrest (59:36) Would Trump Really Invade Greenland or Canada? (01:12:22) How Serious Is the Iran War? (01:21:17) Can Economic Pressure Actually Win a War? (01:31:12) Is the Iran War Becoming a Forever War? (01:45:23) Why Did Trump Bomb Fordow? (02:03:21) Is Israel at the Centre of the Iran War? (02:11:13) Why Does Israel Have So Much Influence Over the US? (02:22:43) How Can Trump Win the Iran War? (02:30:37) Is Trump Really Willing to Leave NATO? (02:32:18) Could Britain Become a Global Power Again? (02:36:03) How Population Collapse Could Reshape Geopolitics (02:41:31) Are We Living in a Quasi-Anarchist World? (02:52:28) How Likely Is Nuclear War? (02:57:45) Is Targeting Electrical Power the Most Dangerous Scenario? (03:05:01) Where to Find the Guys Extra Stuff: See me live in the UK & Ireland this October - https://chriswilliamson.live/ Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Hello friends, I'm bringing a brand new live show across the UK and Ireland this October. It's stories, psychology, audience Q and As, and whatever happens when thousands of overthinkers voluntarily leave the house and end up in the same room together. I'd love to see you there. The last two are completely sold out, so make sure that you snag tickets now using the link in the description or heading to chriswilliamson.live. Dublin's already sold out, loads of venues are limited, tickets are very limited, so get yours now. chriswilliamson.live There's a lot to pay attention to right now, given how many global conflicts are happening, shifting political powers, populist uprisings. What do you think is the biggest threat to global peace at the moment?

• 0:39Speaker 01

  The biggest threat to global peace, we're about seeing our midterm elections. It's the internal divisions in the United States. Those internal divisions have been building for the last five years. They've been normalizing political violence in the United States. They've led to the rise of leaders in the United States that find the use of political violence increasingly normal. That's how we got to the Iran war. And so that, a lot of the specifics that we see, Chris, around the world, I think it's very important to understand that there is a hub. The United States is the most important, the most powerful country on the planet, and what happens internally in the United

• 1:20Speaker 01

  States can have ripple effects around the world. And so I think it's really important to not just talk about all the other issues, but to see the United States is at the center of many, maybe not all, but many of those issues. And what's happening internally in the United States, this is increasingly becoming a house divided.

• 1:43Chris Williamson?

  What do you think?

• 1:44Speaker 02

  I think the United States right now is the greatest threat to global peace, because for the past 30 years, Pax Americana has been dominant. And now with the rise of other powers, the United States refuses to cede its global hegemony. And this is why we're seeing conflicts all around the world, specifically in the Middle East.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  I don't see a global conflict coming. Many regional conflicts are coming, because the global system is restructuring itself. There is not really a global system at this point as there was during the European Imperial Age, or during the period of after World War II. So rather than looking at a confrontation like nuclear war between the United States and Russia, we're looking at various smaller elements. Sometimes the United States gets involved. But as to the international conflict, I lived through the 1970s. It was intense in the United States, but it was intense over a very small war. So the idea that there's

• 2:48Speaker 03

  a global system at this point, it's emerging. But because it's not emerged yet, many of the wars are going to be regional.

• 2:56Chris Williamson?

  Right. So you still see, is it right in thinking that Ukraine, Iran, whatever happens, Taiwan, China, that these things are separate conflicts rather than part of a single global conflict?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Well, I think that we may, the three of us, disagree about whether or not there will be a World War III, a true unified global war. I just want to point out that right now, we're experiencing multiple regional conflicts. They are linked in some ways, but together, they are wrecking the global economy. They're having a major effect on the global economy. What's happening in Russia, what the Russia-Ukraine war, what's happening in the Iran conflict. And if we had a conflict with Taiwan and China on top of that, even

• 3:47Speaker 01

  if those remain three separate arenas, Chris, we might be heading to something far worse than the 1930s Depression. So, for the world. So this would have blowback effects on Africa, even though they wouldn't even be involved. So we can usefully talk about whether we should expect a true World War III scenario, but we are already seeing global consequences in ways we haven't seen since World War II. We did not see these global consequences in the Vietnam War, for example. We did not see these global consequences with the two,

• 4:26Speaker 01

  what we called forever wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. We're seeing them now. And that, even if it doesn't become army on army, Chinese army on American, that kind of force on force, this is already amazingly consequential for our lives.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  I think what's really important to appreciate is that, yes, these conflicts are regional, but there's a power orchestrating these conflicts, and that is the United States. So it is the United States that unilaterally, without any reason, decided to attack Iran, which started the war in the Middle East, which is right now threatening to destroy the global economy. The war in Ukraine can also be blamed on the United States, because after onset of the war in 2020, 2022, Putin and Zelensky would have come to an agreement, but Boris Johnson flew into Kiev and convinced Zelensky to fight this war. Right now, in Southeast

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Asia, the United States is withdrawing, but we're seeing Japan being militarized. And we can imagine that Japan is being supported by the United States. In fact, if you look at the National Defense Strategy, which was published by the Pentagon earlier this year, it calls for the United States withdrawing from the global stage and creating balance of power in each different region, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. So you can make the argument that the United States is intent on maintaining its global hegemony, but it recognizes that it doesn't have the military power, the political will, to control the entire world as it did in Pax Americana. So it is basically offloading its responsibilities

• 6:09Speaker 02

  to its regional allies, NATO in Europe, Israel in the G C C in the Middle East, and Japan in Southeast Asia.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  See, I agree with about 70% of what he's saying. I believe, well, I think you're really on it. And I think that the parts I really agree with are that American decisions have been at the taproot of both of these wars, the war with Russia and Ukraine, and the Iran war that we're experiencing right now. Where I may disagree is I think that they're very much a function of decisions and decision makers that have been evolving, given our internal divisions in our country. I think that we shouldn't look at this as

• 6:58Speaker 01

  simply a product of a global cycle of empires. I think we need to see that for the last 10 years, we have seen, and 10 years, not just two years, an incredible rise of political violence in the United States. That is being driven, Chris, by major social changes inside of the United States, the shift from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy for the first time in our 250-year history, the shift of massive wealth to the top 1% over the last several decades. These are having amazing consequences inside of our

• 7:40Speaker 01

  government. It's producing a set of priorities and leaders which are very different. So we are now seeing leaders that find political violence normal. And this is what you see with President Trump, both in his first term and now increasingly in his second term, and also some by Democratic leaders. You're also seeing, because of these internal problems, Chris, I think not sufficient attention to the consequences of these global decisions. So I don't believe that we have, over the last 10 years, devoted the amount of attention

• 8:23Speaker 01

  to the consequences of issues with Russia and Ukraine, issues with Iran. I think that, and I think that because I've advised every White House from 2001 to 2024, I know something about this degree of attention. And I am, overall, observing, not no attention, I think that's not quite right, and I don't mean that they're truly trivial, but nonetheless, the idea that we would continue to support NATO expansion and make Ukraine a much, much

• 9:05Speaker 01

  stronger country, even after Putin takes Crimea in 2014, without serious attention to the consequences. I think this is, this is, there's just not, there's too much, we need to see, as we're becoming internally absorbed, we're having, we have less cognitive space for the thing that I often do, strategy in the rest of the world. And that lack of cognitive space has not just been a function of one president, I think it's been a function of multiple presidents. And I think that's really what, maybe it's not a disagreement, it's what I would say, maybe an extension, or I would add to what you're saying.

• 9:47Chris Williamson?

  I guess people keep debating whether America is losing its grip as a world superpower. 20 years from now, do you think America is relatively stronger or weaker than it is?

• 9:56Speaker 03

  I would say it's not losing it, it's wanting to lose it. The past 80 years has not been a happy time for the United States. For the United States, the fundamental principle is command of the sea for a long time. Keeping them away from the Atlantic ports was essential in this. This drew us into creating NATO, creating an economic system based on Bretton Woods and all these other things, that put tremendous pressure on the American economy. Even recently, we had to bail out the Japanese, in a way. So what I see the United States is doing, okay, and these things are not gracefully done ever, is pulling back from

• 10:40Speaker 03

  its vulnerability to the world, not engaging it. Now, the world is not

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Seeing it that way because various things happened, okay? One, the Cold War ended in Ukraine. The Russian army could not take Ukraine after five years. This is not a military threat. So now the Cold War is obsolete and the idea of that. So the American desire, you know, is to just, and was predictable, was to disengage to the extent possible. But what the Americans are doing is not increasing their power around the world. It's trying to remove its vulnerability from the world and the world feels betrayed. So the United States is no longer doing it.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  It no longer wants the role it had for the past eighty years.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Hmm. But if we look out twenty years, Chris, and you ask the question, well, right now, we're twenty-six percent of the world's GDP. China seventeen percent of the world's GDP. So we still are number one, at least in terms of the numbers. And, uh, but if we look out twenty years, China has a tremendous advantage going forward, but it's not just the slope of the curve. Um, a big thing is happening, Chris, and it's been happening for the last twenty years, which is we are losing the next industrial advance, the next economic revolution, and we're losing it to China. And we're not even noticing it very much, Chris. So in June of two thousand twenty-five, while we were bombing Fordow,

• 12:16Speaker 01

  I spent two weeks in China touring China's advanced industries. Uh, this was in Beijing, um, and this was in Wuhan. This was in Hangzhou. This was in Shenzhen. Uh, most people go to China. First of all, they stopped going after COVID. And most people who went tend to go to Beijing and Shanghai. I want to see the actual advanced industries on the shop floor.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  For my point to you, China is in terrifically difficult position economically.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Well, let's, let me just explain. You can challenge it, George, but let me explain what I mean. What I saw on that two-week trip, I thought I was gonna go and look at sort of Alibaba, see how they're a little bit ahead of different. I came away with a completely different impression. It was the most important trip. I've been, I was in China in nineteen seventy-nine, so I had some experience here. What I saw was not just uplifting of individual companies, Chris, uplifting whole cities. Wuhan, whole cities. So not just the advanced sector, the healthcare sector, the construction sector. Uh, when you look at what's happening in the cities, we're, we're, we're getting ten percent of the idea of what's happening inside of China

• 13:29Speaker 01

  in the New York Times and in the media. Uh, February, I want to organize a trip to go back to China, Chris. If you want to come, I think you'd find this really interesting because it's what's... So I was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. I went to the University of Pittsburgh in the Rust Belt. That's a, if you go from Chicago to, say, Pittsburgh, that's about, and down to St. Louis, that's about fifty million people, give or take. Well, that's about the half-moon crescent from Wuhan to Shenzhen. Not identical, but pretty close, as, as, as you know, that area.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  China's a huge country.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  It's a huge country, but that crescent we're talking about. What China has done, and literally in about, uh, ten or twelve years, it has some roots in the nineties, is they have uplifted those in, that entire fifty million people, Chris. They integrate. Why are they ahead? They're not just building companies. Their universities are tightly producing the BAs, the MAs, the PhDs. Why can't we produce more Patriot missiles right now? Why can't we just have an Operation Warp Speed? We don't have the workers to do that because we're not integrating the advanced workforce with the advanced, with also advanced healthcare.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  And by the way, advanced driver's license.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  China's cities is not China. The rural areas of China are profoundly important. It is the second-largest economy in the world. In terms of per capita income, it's seventy-first. The fundamental problem that China has is it cannot consume the products it produces. Right now, Xi, just a few weeks ago, announced a plan to make more demands possible in the rural regions, which are very different from the coastal regions. And so when we look at China, we look at a country that has an economy too much, too large for it to consume.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  It is dependent on exports, with the United States being the largest importer of Chinese goods. So when you take a look at China and you take a look at how the, the summits are evolving and what's happening there, we see very, I see a very different China from you. I see the cities in marvelous shape, the coastal areas in South China. But that's not the majority of China. The Chinese still have the rural area where Mao Zedong went to raise the rebel army on the Long March and brought it back, and that's what it did. Now, when you look at it from the kind of point of view at a global basis,

• 16:14Speaker 03

  it is the second-largest economy. When you look at it, its ability to sustain itself, it heavily depends on exports. And what are the things that...

• 16:23Chris Williamson?

  Because it can't consume what it produces.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  It can't. It can't possibly. It has tremendous capabilities, but its per capita income is very low. So you, you see a situation emerging, as emerged several times before, particularly with the United States. The United States was a China of the nineteenth century. That is to say, first, the civil war took place. After that, industrial rising, that heavily dependent on exports to Europe. So when you take a look at the relationship between the economic issues and the political issues and so on and so forth,

• 17:04Speaker 03

  the nature of the United States is to simultaneously have deep divisions and be able somehow to manage it, okay? So when I look at these events, and I lived through the seventies, but this, this loathing of various factions. If you were not anti-war and went to university, you did not come out of that university frequently. So I'm not so impressed by the tensions within the United States. I don't know of a period where they weren't there. We survived the civil war, which was really a, a big discussion, okay? So I see the United States as constantly dynamically evolving through tension.

• 17:49Chris Williamson?

  So if I was to categorize at least what I'm hearing so far, uh, from your side, China, very impressive, not just the upward trend, but the, the integration, this almost, uh, like systemic blending of education in with industry, et cetera, et cetera.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Beyond what we're doing.

• 18:06Chris Williamson?

  Yes, and internal strife inside of America, that's worrying. This could cause fracture and fissure. From your side, China, well, it's got some problems. Look at the rural area of this. Yes, you've got, uh, a great development inside of the cities, but those are pockets that are relatively localized. That makes it less, also, you've got this high export dependency because you can't consume what it is that you produce. And America's been through shit before. It can probably put up with it.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Most of all, China is vulnerable because it depends on these exports. Assume that the other economies falter, where they cared by it. Or there's a political shift. The Chinese get into trouble because they must have access to the global market, the same way the United States had to in the early part of this century.

• 18:54Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  So when we look at all these things, okay, we say, okay, China has evolved dramatically. It has not solved this fundamental problem, which historically was there. The difference between coastal regions of South China and the interior. This is what led to the revolution under Mao Zedong.

• 19:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  And he didn't solve that problem.

• 19:19Chris Williamson?

  Jan, give me your perspective. We've seen two relatively diametrically opposed insights here. Give me yours.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I am completely surprised by this, but unfortunately, and my wife's gonna get very angry at me for this, but I'm gonna have to agree with George on this issue. So let me explain my reasoning. So George mentions the vulnerability of the American empire, and that's the US dollar as a global reserve currency. The American people do not want this system because essentially the world can become a parasite on America, right? So if America has a global reserve currency, then then America's capital markets are completely free and open and liberal. You cannot control capital flows, and this caused tremendous problems. For example, wealth inequality and financialization, the hauling out on the American manufacturing sector.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Okay, that's one issue. Another issue is America needs to guarantee global peace and security. So that's why its army is spread throughout the world. That's why its Pentagon budget is $200,000 a year. So the United States assumes a lot of costs, and who benefits from this arrangement? Well, two forces, Wall Street, right, because of the financialization, but also the Chinese Communist Party. Because as George points out, China is an export-dependent economy. In fact, you can make the argument that what China is doing is free riding on the American system, right? Because because when Chinese ships export their goods to Europe, to the Middle East, to the United States,

• 20:49Speaker 02

  it's been protected by the US Navy, not this Chinese Navy, the US Navy. China doesn't even have a blue water navy. It's the Americans that protect the seas. And when Chinese do exchanges, when they trade, it's through the US dollar. So China is completely dependent on Pax Americana. And so the idea that as Pax America is falling, China will rise, makes no sense. And I mean, the reality is, as George points out, China lacks domestic consumption power. Its people do not spend any money because its people do not have any money. All the rich people are going where? To the United States. That's problem one.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  But it's a huge problem that we haven't discussed, which is the demographic issue where China is aging rapidly because of the one child policy. China has no workforce. That's why China is spending everything on robotics and on semiconductors and on AI, because China doesn't have the productive force it needs to carry it through the past 20, for the next 20, 40 years because of the aging crisis. So China is in a world of trouble. But where I disagree with you-

• 21:55Chris Williamson?

  Is it in a bigger world of trouble than America?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because regardless of how you feel about the United States right now, the United States is a self-sufficient, resource-rich economy with a very vibrant, energetic, young population. China has the opposite problem, which is that it is extremely export-oriented. It's a very poor country, very limited resources. It's very dependent on global supply chains, and what's bringing down right now are global supply chains.

• 22:23Chris Williamson?

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• 23:22Speaker 01

  So let me just respond in this way. I had exactly their image 10 years ago, exactly their image. So I first went to China in 1979, then I didn't go back until 2012, 10 trips from 2012 to 2015. Then I went back in 2025. Even as late as 2015, I had exactly their image. Here's what happened in this trip, and this is what really are the core things that I'm seeing. Number one, the Alibaba, BYD, Xiamen, I didn't just go and look at the shop floors. I met with their executives. They showed me their growth plans.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  It's not just that they have been spurting up since COVID. So all this building massively development since COVID. It's that since 2017, essentially the Trump tariffs that were first put on China in 2017 by President Trump, there's been a dramatic emphasis to disengage the development of the next generation of industries from America. So you can't buy the cutting-edge BYD vehicles here in the United States. You can't buy the next-level Teslas of Xiamen here in the United States, and they're not trying to sell them here. Also, the whole issue with Walmart and so forth, that's the last generation of what's occurring.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  They showed me their growth models. They are still export-oriented, but they're not export-oriented to Europe, and they're not export-oriented to the United States, although they take a little crumbs on the edges. It is built around Asia. They showed me the growth models they're really counting on are in Asia. Now, true, in the short term here, there's some problems with the Iran war and of course, Asia. So we talked about that with the actual top VPs, the exact, the top executives, and they explained to me that the bottom line is, the more the United States gets sucked into a quagmire with Iran, yes, they will run into some short-term problems, but just like COVID,

• 25:34Speaker 01

  when they came out of those problems of the supply chain problem in COVID, they jettisoned ahead. They thought they were likely going to get ahead. And if you look at the numbers of what the BYD production has been this year in 2026, what the numbers of Xiamen has been, the numbers at least we can see, they're not as good as they were hoping, but they're about at the same level as the last year. So China's not collapsing.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  The Chinese growth rate is down to a little over 4%. It was previously 5%, and it's great, it was a 15% growth rate.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  And I'm saying this is the wrong measure. This would be like measuring America's growth rate without noticing electrification in the 1880s, which starts in this really small way. America has been great because since 1880, we have led every technological revolution since 1880. The AI revolution that we're right, going through right now, we hope we're going to come out ahead. The stock market's certainly betting on that. I'm telling you, what I saw in China, it's not just about DeepSeek and Alibaba. They're building the core infrastructure to be able to beat us.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  And I mean, let me ask you this question. So right now, Japan is remit, remitizing rapidly, and it's building an alliance with India, the Philippines, and Australia, the Quad, right? It seems to me, in the long term, the intention is to embargo China, to cut off supply chains.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  With India coming into it, Indonesia coming into it, and so on and so forth. So from Japan all the way to India, there is at sea a blockade.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  That's right. So what is China's response to this possible embargo?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  So as I look out here, first of all, if you're quite right, that there's a military possible consequence here. I think President Xi's question to Trump was exactly the right question, which was, are you, President Trump, gonna fight here if there's a conflict between China and Taiwan? And President Trump said he wouldn't answer that question. Because if you, yes, you have the Quad moving forward, but if you take out the United States from that equation, as I think we are heading in that direction, then this is just a very different competition between the Quad and China. They might fight, they might decide to fight, just the Quad and China,

• 28:03Speaker 01

  but, and both will go down some, but this is not a sure winner for the Quad over China. So I think this would be a very different, and notice, this is not China provoking the war.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  This is, this is outsiders attacking China. And what is, what did Mao, what, what happened with Mao? This was a gigantic revolution inside of China to foreign conquest. So this is not, talking about unifying China.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  If I could, the Taiwan situation has profoundly changed. Inside of Taiwan, the population is divided almost down the middle with the KMT, the Kuomintang, which should descend in favor of reuniting with China in some sort of way. That's about half the population. The other half the population is very much opposed to it.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  From the Chinese point of view, Taiwan was a very great danger because between Japan and the Philippines, Taiwan was a blocking force.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  The first island chain. The first island chain.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  It's the first island chain. That they want Taiwan opened, okay? The United States does not have a fundamental interest on Taiwan. So the idea is, we see that Xi is coming to the United States. And he has said this week, we're going to reach many great agreements in the United States. One of the forecasts I had was that this year, China and the United States would come to a fundamental understanding with each other. Why? China must have that understanding. The United States is not a trivial partner, okay? It is the number one trading partner, and it is the only military threat to China. Therefore, accommodation is rational for China.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  And these talks have been taking place. So what I'm seeing in China is a tremendous amount of instability in the political system. The economic system is moving ahead properly. But China has a fundamental problem. Because, as I said, it must have a decent relationship with the United States. And the United States has said to it, we cannot be dependent on China for its imports if it is also possibly go to war with us. That happened to us during the Arab oil embargo. We were dependent on the Arabs. The Israelis went to war and they cut a bargain. It was a disaster in 1970s. So if we are too dependent on a country with whom we have hostile relations, that's unsustainable.

• 30:38Chris Williamson?

  So you're suggesting that the US and China are going to become friends soon?

• 30:41Speaker 03

  We're not going to be friends, we're not going to be lovers, they simply need each other.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  And here I agree. So my whole point was not that we must then have conflict with China. In fact, when I was in China, I was giving talks, arguing that, given everything I just said, I think that China can rise peacefully with the United States. That's my big position. And it's because when I look out at the growth of power, what is power today? Power is modernization, technological development. We see that right now with the drought, with what we're experiencing with Iran. We're not losing to Iran because of Iran's 4% of, it's because of, we're behind in understanding the second precision revolution. What's happening, Chris, is others are evolving.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  We're used to thinking, we, the United States, are on the cutting edge of everything. And what we're learning is, we're not on the cutting edge of everything. Now, that doesn't mean we have to go to war against China. I was also impressed, President Xi basically asked Trump about the Thucydides trap. Are you, are we going to go to war? So I believe these are the right questions. I don't think we're heading to a war with China if we're smart. Because what we need to do is develop our industrial base. We need to develop and modernize internally. This is a choice. Back to your question, will we be replaced as the world's number one in 20 years? This is a choice.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  If we keep fighting these horrible quagmires, if we stop, if we don't develop internally here, if we don't catch up to China, the answer is yes.

• 32:21Chris Williamson?

  Given where we're at at the moment, looking into your respective crystal balls, which country do you think is the most powerful in the world in 20 years' time?

• 32:29Speaker 03

  The United States is the only global power. China's a regional power. It cannot push force into the Atlantic and so on.

• 32:37Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  We can. So we're reaching a world that's very different. That doesn't mean that the United States is in decline, okay? Certainly, I agree with you on many of these things, but I don't think it's fundamental to the position of the United States. It is the United States occupy the position in the world, which caused it a great deal in many different dimensions. And that backing off from that reduces tensions within the United States and so on.

• 33:05Chris Williamson?

  It's, I was thinking that there would be some sort of seesaw, probably between China and the US, but maybe there was another player that I hadn't thought about. It sounds like both are in some form of mild decline.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  They're in flux. So my position is, it's up to our leaders who's going to be number one in 2020. There's three dimensions of global power I would look at. Dimension number one is, the country's GDP is a fraction of world product. Right now, we're 26%, China's 17. But if you look forward here, this could easily flip-flop in 20 years. The second is allies. How many friends do you have in the world? Well, look at what's happened with the terrorists. Look at what's happening with Canada right now, today. What is happening is, in the middle of this gigantic war that we're having with Iran, we are deciding to alienate friends.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Well, who's likely to pick up those friends? It's going to be China. And then issue number three is our technological base, our growth. If the world economy goes over a cliff with our $40 trillion in debt, I think the idea that we're going to invest our way out of this in the AI, I'm just, look, maybe that will all work out, Chris, okay? And we're going to be fine with 40 trillion.

• 34:25Chris Williamson?

  I'm laughing my way through the apocalypse, I don't know about you.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Well, I'm just trying to explain, these are the problems I'm worried about.

• 34:31Chris Williamson?

  Just one second, let's hear it from Professor Jiang.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  So I think that these past 30, 40, 40 years of Pax Americana have been unique in human history. Never before had we had a power that could span the entire globe, that had, for the first time, we had a global reserve currency. Never before had one nation been able to dictate the global economy. So I think Pax Americana has been unique in human history. And I think we're reverting back to the mean, which is more regional dominance. So the way that I examine how nation-states thrive or die is using three basic criteria, which is going to be very different from yours. But first, I look at energy. Basically, how hardworking are the people?

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Second thing is openness, which is, how open are people to change? How, how are they, how much are they willing to absorb new ideas? And the third is cohesion, which is, how much do they value their own neighbor? If you actually use these three metrics, okay? Energy, openness, and cohesion, you find that in each region, one nation will dominate above all else. So in East Asia, it would not be China that dominates, it would be Japan that dominates. It will be in, in Europe, it will either be Germany or Poland, one of the two. Germany is more powerful, but Poland is more cohesive. And you can tell me next week, what you find.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  It's more dynamic by far.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  And it's more in danger, it seems, and that.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  That's much more energetic.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Energy.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  That's right. And then in, in North America, it's the United States by far. The United States is so dominant that the United States could, like, keep on electing Donald Trump from the next.

• 36:12Chris Williamson?

  It could faceplant its way through the next few decades and still win.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, unfortunately, that is the case for the United States. And then in the Middle East, I believe it is Israel that is most dominant.

• 36:20Chris Williamson?

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• 37:02Chris Williamson?

  So upgrade your business and get the exact same checkout that we use at New Tonic with Shopify. You can sign up for a free trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to Shopify.com/modernwisdom. That's Shopify.com/modernwisdom. Interesting on the US's ability to put its, both of its feet in its mouth and continue to be a preeminent power. Does that help to smooth over some cracks and inefficiencies and instabilities inside of America? The momentum, just the sheer size of it, means that there can be issues bubbling below the surface that don't get seen for a little while, and then eventually the sort of lid gets blown up? Obviously, you're talking about civil unrest. I don't know how likely you think civil unrest, proper civil unrest's going to be due to this.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  So I have coming out, Chris, a book called Our Own Worst Enemies. America in the Age of Violent Populism. It's pre-order now on Amazon. It'll be available in just a couple of weeks to be in your mailbox. And I've spent five years studying this problem. Because my work on political violence, what I do, Chris, is I look at, where is the biggest threat to America? The biggest threat. So it changes from time to time. And what I started to see after the George Floyd protests, which were mostly peaceful, but what does mostly peaceful mean with the George Floyd protests? When 28 million are protesting and 7% are riots and political violence, that's millions of people who are unrest.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  And then also on January 6th, this is the first time in our history that we've had a violent mob supported by the President of the United States to try to stop the constitutional process of changing presidential power in the United States. Then we've had the rise of political assassinations and assassination attempts. I could go on and on. This is, I would say, akin to the 1960s. I agree, we've had some periods of violent populism before, the book covers that. But what's different is it's on both the right and the left. The number one fact today is, tens of millions of Americans on each side, I don't mean total,

• 39:13Speaker 01

  each side of the political spectrum, support political violence for the goals that they also support. That's why you're getting support for very aggressive ICE tactics against Democratic protesters, even after ICE kills those Democratic protesters.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  I would argue that this is not the first time it happened. We had a civil war. And that civil war, we ripped ourselves apart and then came together again. There's a strangeness in the United States. Most countries that have that kind of civil war could not accommodate itself again. We are historically, when we take a look at these various periods in history, at each other throats, it is one of the dimensions of the United States, which is based on the fact that we're an invented country. Invented not only in the sense that the Constitution was invented, but that the population was invented. There was no, other nations have histories of culture and so on, we constantly came together.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  So one of the things that the United States is very good at, from the founding.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Is being deeply divided because as John Adams said, one third of the people were for the revolution, one third of people were against the revolution, one third of people didn't care. That was his reading. So I see the divisions in a very different way than you do.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think it's good enough to say that we survived the Civil War because 600,000 people died in the Civil War. So let's just be clear. We are 40 trillion dollars in debt. The idea that sure, we'll just have a civil war and no problem, we'll get out of this just fine. This is the showing how he, we've got to go to the civil war standard to, to say we can survive a civil war. No, we will not be able to be anything like, we won't even be a regional power.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  I disagree profoundly. There's a cultural nature. China has a culture. It has a history. It has an evolution. Britain has a history and so on. Okay.

• 41:14Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 41:15Speaker 03

  When you take a look at.

• 41:16Chris Williamson?

  Or you used to.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Well, shut up, dude. All right? Shut up. Okay. When you take a look at American history, you measure yourself and your state of your company against something. Otherwise, you're constantly in a feeling of this has never been so terrible. So you have to have a sense of proportion on what goes on. So when we look at the, the division in the United States, we've seen World War II, we've seen the isolationists and the interventionists. We have constantly approached the world deeply divided. Okay. I saw that mentioned in the Civil War because that was the most extreme example.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  But even the, the revolution was not a joint universal uprising. It was deeply divided. And my wife's family had to move to Canada because after they went.

• 42:12Chris Williamson?

  That's a high price to pay.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Well, they were, but the point I make, making here is that.

• 42:17Chris Williamson?

  Put me in the wall.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  One of the things about the Americans is we're constantly having the feeling we're going to hell. We have the ability to overestimate tremendously our weaknesses and underestimate the tremendous strengths. This is where I have to, I respect you, I disagree with you. I look at the past as a measure of the culture and its flexibility and viability even under pressure.

• 42:45Chris Williamson?

  Do you think America is a country permanently in strife internally or is there something unique about the modern?

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Well, let me, let me also be clear. My book is explaining, we're not heading to civil war. We are heading to violent populism and we're in the middle of violent populism.

• 43:01Chris Williamson?

  Can you explain what the difference is, please?

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Yes. Civil War is where you have armies going toe to toe. Truly, we're, this is battle after battle. So we start to see the movies on Civil War. These are, I think, the extreme scenarios. And we can talk about extreme scenarios. I hope we would never get there. So I don't find them acceptable, but I don't think that's really what our future is. Um, I think our future is more, we're more in danger of becoming Turkey, for example, where because we have normalized political violence, it starts to become normal for the president to absorb more and more powers under the presidency. Uh, and then also to sort of hide things. So this isn't just happening with President Trump.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  During President Biden's presidency, uh, we had open borders essentially. We had 10 million plus come into the country and yet this was all, the image was, oh no, there's nothing happening at the border. It's literally not happening. Uh, and that was, um, uh, by a democratic president. So what I'm trying to point out, Chris, is that we're in a world where because political violence is becoming normal and, and George is finding it, well, sure, it's just okay. It's just another day in America. This is what I'm taking, this is what the book's about. It's about how political violence has become normal for tens of millions of Americans for the first time since the 1960s.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  And this has consequences because it's on both the right and the left and we're coming to an election. And this midterms, we already have, um, and I was just on many podcasts, we have people who are, who are terrified that President Trump is going to seize ballot boxes. Now, why would they be terrified of that? Because President Trump said he was going to do that in February. And so, so this isn't just coming out of nowhere. And, and my, and when I'm on those podcasts, I'm trying to say, yes, that may happen, but we will hold ourselves together and here's how we're going to do it. So I'm not trying to tell you we're heading to civil war. I'm also not trying to tell you civil war would just be fine.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  What I am trying to tell you is, uh, the way you're going to see, um, uh, powers absorbed by the federal government, uh, things like use of martial law and so forth, is because political violence has become normalized.

• 45:25Chris Williamson?

  The normalization, which is the difference on your, what's your perspective on internal strife in America?

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Right. So I think like the best historical analogy for the United States right now is a Roman Empire. And the critical turning point, uh, for the Roman Empire is, uh, maybe 150 BCE. And this is the Third Punic War. This is before the Third Punic War starts between Carthage and Rome. At this point, Carthage is basically, uh, destroyed and it's just an economic center. It's no longer a military power. And there's a huge debate in the Roman Senate about what to do with Carthage. Uh, Cato the Elder demanded the destruction of Carthage, uh, because Carthage would always be a threat to Rome otherwise. Everyone else was like, no, guys, we cannot destroy Carthage because if we destroy Carthage,

• 46:11Speaker 02

  what will happen is we will have no external enemy and we will start to tear ourselves apart. Cato the Elder won and they destroyed Carthage in the Third Punic War. And then right, what happens afterwards? Complete civil strife. And after the civil war starts, right, with, um, starting with, um, um, um, it, it starts about 100 BCE, um, some, some, something called the social war, but it never really stops. It, it's a social war then leads to the rise of Julius Caesar, which then leads, leads to the rise of Augustus, Augustus Caesar, which then leads to all sorts of wars. So that's a problem with the United States. The United States is probably the most violent country on this planet, like by far. There are more, there are more guns per capita, there are more guns than people.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  And like, America's the only nation to play football. Am I, am I correct to say, um, only Americans play football?

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Um, so American, Americans have this tremendous energy.

• 47:06Chris Williamson?

  Hang on, hang on. You're going to have to draw the parallel between, there's lots of guns in America and America's the only country to play football. I feel like I've missed something there.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Right. What, what I'm saying is that America is a society that, uh, prides itself on the First Amendment and the Second Amendment. It's a society that is, um, by the standards of every other society, it's pretty aggressive. And.

• 47:29Chris Williamson?

  Right. The physical contact violence, like doing, like listening to Metallica and flying F-14s and shit.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  So, so this energy, you can, you can either, you know, um, direct it outwards to, to, you know, conquering the world, or if you don't direct it outwards and there's a fear that it becomes, um, directed inwards, which could lead to civil war. It could be violent populism. It could be a full, full, uh, civil war. It could also be an interesting, interesting scene, very much like the movie One Battle After Another. But I, I do think that right now at this point, uh, domestic violence is almost unavoidable.

• 48:03Chris Williamson?

  Well, really? Why?

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Um, if you just, I, I mean, like, and, and you can, you can agree or disagree, but I think there are certain trends that, that are in place that make in, internal, um, violence, um, unavoidable. So the first is just the wealth inequality, the financialization of society.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  This is what I was talking about.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  That's one trend, but another major trend, um, is, um, the gerontocracy, the baby boomers. So what's happened is that, um, baby, baby boomers, I, I apologize to, to both of you, but the baby boomers have an applies political power, I can make wealth and social status. And if you're a young person, you have absolutely no opportunity. Uh, you know, so, um, James B. Calhoun in 1960s, he ran a very successful experiment called the Rat Utopia Experiment. He basically put rats in a paradise where there'd be no, um, um, pet predators, free food every day. And all that happened was the rats just turned against each other and killed each other.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  And the reason why is young men, especially young men, they strive for social status. If you don't give them social status, if they're unable to climb the social hierarchy and find recognition and status, they turn violent. And, and, and this is just human nature.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  So we tried to get at this. So this, this book that I'm coming out with, it's not, it's a product of this five years of research that we've been doing at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago. Twenty national surveys. This is where all that millions of dollars. So, and why we did all that was to try to answer some of the why questions. So we asked questions such as, how worried are you, you won't be as prosperous as your parents? That kind of gets at the wealth inequality and the social mobility. Well, we didn't just find out the general answer to that. We wanted to know, did that make you more likely to support violence, political violence? And

• 50:04Speaker 01

  it turns out, the more you think you won't be as prosperous as your parents, the more you support political violence on the right and on the left. It's a wedge, it drives both sides up. We also asked, remember I mentioned the second social change? We're transitioning from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy? Well, other countries in the world, this has played a huge role in political violence. That's why Lebanon, for instance, has had so much political violence over the years, over the decades. Well, this is not unique to America, but it's happening for us now, Chris, for the first time. And so we asked the question, if you, are you happy with the transition to a white minority democracy? Or are you unhappy and want to reverse it? And what

• 50:49Speaker 01

  do we find? If you want to reverse it, you are far more likely to support political violence on right wing issues. If you want to keep it going, you're more likely to support political violence on left wing issues. These are not happening in isolation. They're not just swirling around and gee, it's kind of random why we're having of this rise of violent populism now. There are actual reasons, and they overlap with some of what John's talking about, but we're able to get to the data to see, well, let's do some tests here and see, can we really see it in the data? And the answer is yes. And this is why, so

• 51:30Speaker 01

  it's, it's been very worrisome, Chris, for some time. So a year ago, I published a big op ed, June 2025, in the New York Times. I was explaining this data in this op ed. I was warning, we're on the brink of major political violence. And what happens? The Charlie Kirk assassination happens. What happens? We get the rise of Operation Midway Blitz, and then Metro Blitz. And that wasn't the first time, Chris. So a year before that, this data was showing a rise of anger to the point of violence against President Trump. This was in June 2024. So I brought it to our National Sheriffs Association. So I'm connected with these. So remember, advised White Houses, et cetera. And I warned them

• 52:14Speaker 01

  that there's a non-trivial possibility that we're going to see a assassination attempt against President Trump.

• 52:21Chris Williamson?

  When did you say this?

• 52:22Speaker 01

  This was the last week of June 2024. Now, they listened. I just want to say, Chris, they listened. And guess what happened on July 13th? And then what happened in my phone is it blew up, because suddenly people were

• 52:39Chris Williamson?

  Mystic Max.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Let's get that data.

• 52:42Chris Williamson?

  I thought it literally blew up, but yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  No, no, no. What I'm trying to say is, Chris, this is, so just as my 20 years of modeling of the Iran War has led to some predictions about what might come in advance, we haven't, but that's of course been well known in this, at this point. This is not the first time. My work has been studying political violence, not just in the rear view mirror, but with an eye toward giving real decision makers, whether it's Chief of Staff of the Air Force, West Wing of the White House, FBI, for, I call it strategic intelligence. It's not tactical intelligence. It's where things are heading, to see where probabilities of events in the future are shifting. That's my work.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't disagree with you. We are in a violent time. I simply put that context of American history and American culture. So if we're doing something that we've never done before, and never done before and recovered from, and so on, is very different from this is unprecedented. So when I look at culture, I take a look at the culture itself, at its history, and ask the question, is there a precedent for this? Okay? Have we, is this something we've never seen? If that's true, then there's a radical shift possible. If this is a cycle, a process of a cycle that periodically happens and comes and goes

• 54:14Speaker 03

  and is handled in the past, there's a high probability of a counteraction of subsiding. So this is why I go back to things that don't seem very relevant, because they went away. But if you'd lived through the 1930s, with the isolationists, deeply, in some ways antisemitic and everything else, and the tensions that were there, well, I've seen that. So when I talk about the Civil War, it's just to say, this was the most extreme event of this sort, and we survived. So I ask questions, not only is a crisis coming, which I completely agree with you on, but is it in the nature of the culture of the United States to withstand those crises?

• 54:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I suppose. Okay. So your, your point is, this might not be terminal, this might not be existential to the United

• 55:04Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 55:05Chris Williamson?

  I mean, does anybody think, like, even if there was a civil war, there would be some people left? And then you've got a country afterward, like from the ashes, something can come back.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  What came out of that, of civil war, was the most dynamic development economically, perhaps in history.

• 55:24Chris Williamson?

  This is like an accelerationist argument. We could

• 55:26Speaker 03

  No, it has nothing to do with the quasality, or this is necessary. I'm simply saying to you, that if you get a fever that you've never had before, well, that's really significant. If on the other hand, you had another cold, you don't take it that seriously. I'm trying to put this in the context of the American nature. So I'm arguing, there's a culture, there's a nature, there's a history.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  I just want to make two

• 55:53Speaker 03

  And one thing, though, and one, and one thing is, every time we sought, we were finished. During the seventies, the idea, the killings, the kidnappings and everything that were going on, well, they went away. So I'm saying there's a cyclical process.

• 56:10Chris Williamson?

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• 56:54Chris Williamson?

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• 57:09Speaker 01

  So I would just say two quick points. Number one is, I want it on the record, I am not pro-civil war.

• 57:15Chris Williamson?

  That's the accelerationist argument.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  I just want to be clear. Just want to make sure I'm on the record. Number two, no, hold it. Number two, more, more, more seriously. So the point of the research of the book isn't just to give histories of the sixties, it's why did the violence in the sixties end? It ends for real reasons. It's not just we burn ourselves out. There were two drivers to the 1960s political violence. They're driven on social change. Strange number one was, we had a massive shift in migration of blacks to the, the North and the Midwest, that we're, that we're not getting political representation. That was underneath the Black Riots, Malcolm X, the Bowser, the Bullet. In the, by the mid 1970s, you start to have the Black Caucus. You actually get some black, now it's not as good as it should

• 58:02Speaker 01

  be. I'm not trying to say it's perfect, but this is one of the big reasons why that violence comes down. There's a second driver of violence in the 1960s. It's the Vietnam War, the anti-war movement, conscription. What ends? It's not just the Vietnam War ends, Chris, conscription ended. We end in 1973, conscription. So I never had to be conscripted.

• 58:26Chris Williamson?

  Something structural has changed.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  And that took the steam out of the anti-war movement. As soon as the, that, that's what ended the Weathermen, the Weather Underground. That's what ended those, that, that violent protests here. Both of those issues end. So my point is, we can actually look today at the social causes, and I can tell you, we're likely to have this violent populism for another 10 years. It's not just

• 58:53Chris Williamson?

  You think that there's another decade of this?

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yes, because of the social changes. We can, we'll talk about those shifts, Chris.

• 58:59Speaker 03

  Then I ask you the question, how does it end this time?

• 59:02Speaker 01

  This is up to us, and that's my point. My point is that this is not all in historical inevitability, and we shouldn't just throw the dice to the wind. We should understand what's happening to us so that we can make more intelligent decisions going forward. It's not just a prediction of doom and gloom. It's things are going in a bad direction. Let's take that seriously, and then let's do something to offset it. That's been my world with mostly foreign policy elites for the last 30 years. I'm now trying to do that with the public.

• 59:35Chris Williamson?

  Zhang, you reckon there's gonna be internal strife for the next 10 years?

• 59:39Speaker 02

  Right, so back to the young man problem. So right now, there's a very popular phrase called hypergamy. I'm not sure if you know what hypergamy means, but you know what it means.

• 59:51Chris Williamson?

  But why are you looking at me as hypergamy? You're saying that's because I'm a high-value male?

• 59:55Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right, yes. Yeah, so the problem is that the majority of young men are not able to find a suitable mate. Because one way to reduce young men's violent tendencies is to get married, have children, and then become productive members of society. But if, like, you know, the majority of young men cannot get married, then what's the solution? Well, you send them off to war, right? So there are two possibilities ahead for the United States. How do you deal with these millions of young men who cannot get laid, basically? Well, you send them off to war to die. If you did that, if you had conscription, it's possible,

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  they would just rather fight you, okay? So another solution is to colonize North and South America, to turn the entire Western Hemisphere into a US colony. And they do that already with Venezuela, they'll probably do that with Canada, they're talking about Greenland.

• 1:00:54Chris Williamson?

  You think that realistically, America would try and colonize Canada, Greenland, and Venezuela, not just, oh, we're gonna take a couple of leaders here and have soft power? They would actually try to do that?

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Yes, I do, because you just wanna stop the United States from doing this. Why wouldn't the United States just take Alberta? What's stopping the United States from just taking Alberta?

• 1:01:15Chris Williamson?

  Is that not war? Is that not like...

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Canada has what army yet?

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The reason he's saying Alberta is that's where the oil is. So one of the things, so this is something I was... So with my classes at the University of Chicago, so not for the reason of the dynamic, I won't quite go that far. But what I... So having studied violent populism, I watched over 200 of President Trump's speeches as he was running for president, 200 all the way through. I went to four of his rallies, which didn't mean you just go to his rallies and listen. To a Trump rally, that means you get there at 8:00 AM, you're already three hours late, because you can, and you can still barely see the stage, by the way, and you have to wait 10

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  hours, and you can't move. If you move, you lose your place in line, and you're all the way at the back. So that's why those hundreds of people are dropping over there. So what do you do? I surveyed them. I talked to them. I actually, literally, that's what it's surveys. And so I learned a lot about what was underneath the support for Trump. I also went to Harris rallies, and it was easier to get there. You get 3:30, you still get a seat. So it was a little different there. So nonetheless, nonetheless, what he is describing here, you could see a lot of, in some of what President Trump was saying, he was planting some seeds.

• 1:02:39Chris Williamson?

  Ah, but come on, bombastic, this guy, gregarious, talky-talky, like, isn't this a cool talk? Like, realistically, he's gonna go to China?

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Hold it, that was all fine, Chris, until after the election. It wasn't just talky-talky, it got seriously-seriously. Okay, so I'm not telling you, I'm not telling you, I immediately jumped to the conclusion, oh, that would be a 99% likelihood of happening. I work in percentages.

• 1:03:06Chris Williamson?

  Okay, what do you think's the percentage likelihood that Greenland, or Canada, or Venezuela are brought into the American remit?

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  I think it turns hugely on what happens with this election in 2028. So if we are internally divided, as I think there's likely to be, I think this external expansion is likely to go down. However, if it turns out that this is not just, we're not internally divided, but we see the MAGA red wave get stronger and stronger and stronger, there's a very good chance that what Zhang is talking about will come to be. Because these are, this is what I mean by it's up to us, Chris.

• 1:03:49Chris Williamson?

  This is wild. I did not think that I was gonna find out that we were maybe going to invade Canada and Greenland and Venezuela.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  Why not?

• 1:03:57Chris Williamson?

  I just, it seems so, it's so absurd, and this would be, it would be invasion.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  I'd agree with you.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not, I'm not, again, the probabilities here, so let's be clear. I'm not saying this is 70% likely, so I deal in the world of probabilities. But if we're talking about where there is a world where this is even a 20% probability, this changes everything. The idea, then, if it's even 20% likely, and notice what's happening with Carney, notice what's happening with the leaders. I don't think Carney believes it's 80% likely, but if you watch his speech, listen to his speech in Munich this year, he certainly thinks this is, there's something on the horizon, and President Trump has been talking directly to him about moving the border with Canada, and the treaty, and abandoning

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  the 1908 treaty with Canada. This has been a direct conversation with the Prime Ministers of Canada in the last year and a half. This is, I don't say it means it's a certainty, Chris, that's going too far, but to ignore that this is then translating into taking Venezuela's oil, serious war planning now for Greenland. The war planning doesn't equal conquest, Chris, but I think we're making a mistake to just simply dismiss it as, oh, this is just talk on the side.

• 1:05:20Chris Williamson?

  I wasn't dismissing it, I didn't even know that it was an option on the table. What do you think is more likely, China into Taiwan, or the US into one of Canada, Greenland, Venezuela?

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Oh, I vote for the latter with the US. So I think that...

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  100%.

• 1:05:33Chris Williamson?

  No way. All of this talk, all of this talk that people, the processes, the microchip, all of the China into Taiwan, and the...

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  So I've been arguing for decades...

• 1:05:43Chris Williamson?

  More likely that we're gonna go into Canada, Venezuela, or Greenland?

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  If China plays its cards right, Taiwan is gonna fall right into China's lap. I've been, so President Chen brought me to Taiwan in January 2003. I was one of five air power experts, this was the President of Taiwan, okay, for a two-day conference with the President of Taiwan. He wanted the answer to the question, this is January 2003, what should Taiwan do if China preemptively attacks Taiwan while the United States is preemptively attacking Iraq? So remember, we had this thing called the Iraq War. Well, for Taiwan, that was a very scary situation. So for two days, I was with the President, and also with the top of the Air Force, and we were discussing

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  the no-kidding discussions here. And I also got windows into their national security, and I got the polls, that is, the internal polls, which there was nothing classified inside, no NDA, so I'm not revealing anything that I'm not supposed to be. But I'm telling you that one of the absolute issues here with Taiwan is, there's a large part of the population that sees growth over there, and they're happy to get some growth, called Taipei 101. So there's a whole lot underneath this, Chris. Doesn't mean Taiwan is certain to, you know, sort of go in China's way, but what I've been arguing for some time is that if China just continues to grow,

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  then what's going to happen is, it will eventually dwarf Taiwan even more than it does today, and a lot of folks in Taiwan are gonna wanna make money in China.

• 1:07:21Speaker 03

  I already talked about that. What I wanna do is not deny any of these things, put them in perspective. Take a look at a community like the United States, which is a community, Con Valley, so on and so forth. Has there ever been deep divisions? How did we handle them? So what we take a look is, for example, immigration. Right from the beginning of the founding, there's a dread of migrants. The Scots-Irish that came here were marginalized profoundly, and so on and so forth, okay? Along with these evolutions of immigration and so on and so forth,

• 1:08:01Speaker 03

  which were built on, we needed, okay, there's also tension within those, between those who wanted it and didn't want it. The businessmen wanted cheap labor, the others didn't want it, the workers didn't want it, okay? So we have to enter these from my point of view, and I agree with you absolutely, and what's coming. I simply have a different sense of proportionality that is not as profoundly serious as we, who've never experienced it before, would wanna make it be. There's precedent for it. There's a manner in which the Americans have historically gone through this, my pointing to the Civil War, or simply pointing to the most extreme situation, that even that we recovered from.

• 1:08:46Chris Williamson?

  When was the last time that you saw something you would say was unprecedented?

• 1:08:49Speaker 03

  Internally in America, I see a long line of continuum, including the tensions and everything else.

• 1:08:58Chris Williamson?

  Eventually, you break, you're using so much artistic license to say, well, you know, this thing has been, it's analogous to something that's occurred before. Is there a time, like, I'm trying to work out when that's not, that cycle hasn't...

• 1:09:11Speaker 03

  Well, my point, my point is, before I say this is catastrophic, unprecedented, and so on, I have to look back. Most stable countries go through vast cycles, periods of economic, social unrest. So it's not a smooth flying anywhere, not even Iceland.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  Do you think it's probably normal for a United States President to invade a country with no reason, with no strategy, with no plan at all, to win the war?

• 1:09:45Speaker 03

  I will say, let me see in three months, what happens. First of all, there was a reason.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  What was the reason?

• 1:09:55Speaker 03

  Basically, he keeps going after nuclear material. Why? Because I was on staff at times after nine eleven doing scenarios. What is the worst case scenario? And it was a nuclear, a country like Iran getting nuclear weapons, putting them on board a French ship and sailing New York Harbor. At this point, we've had very few casualties on the American side. And two days ago, a commander of the IRGC, a very senior commander, stood up and said, we've got to stop this war. The people are not, are suffering and everything else.

• 1:10:37Speaker 03

  All I am saying about this war is when you're in the middle of it, it's extraordinary. On the other hand, we see one, it's been a very short one. There's been, on the American side, very small losses. On the, you're seeing evolutions in Iran with very different outcomes. So I simply say, okay, step back from this extraordinary event and ask the questions and then ask, is it really extraordinary?

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  So if the reason was a nuclear weapon, why assassinate it? Why assassinate on the first day the At-Tola? Who, who had a religious fatwa against nuclear weapons?

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  Because he wouldn't, his president wouldn't listen to intelligence. The head of counterterrorism resigned, saying that he will not allow me into his office. He's listening to Israelis. And presidents make massive mistakes. He confused the people there as a government of Iran. He confused them, killed them. That's not the government of Iran, it's IRGC. So on the other hand, it's very important to say, this war's lasted a few months. Okay? We are far from understanding how it will end, but that it will end is certain and so on.

• 1:12:03Speaker 03

  So when I take a look at this, yeah, he did a very stupid thing. He profoundly, he's not the first president to do some very stupid things. The only thing I'm saying is that we tend to overreact to things when we don't put them in context.

• 1:12:22Chris Williamson?

  How big, how big of a deal is the Iran war?

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's, it's, it is the biggest deal since going up against Germany in World War II. So Iran is the most difficult challenge we've had since Germany in World War II. So let me give a different window into this. So I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years. And in the modeling of the bombing of Iran, I started to do this in 2005, and here's where I partly agree with George. I do this in 2005 because once it is known that Iran is enriching uranium, that's when the military planning of going against Iran really jacks up. And I know, because I was teaching for the Air Force in the nineties, I had a lot of experience. So from seventy-nine to about 2002, we have political tensions.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Yes, we occasionally do a war game, but after 2002 and three, things get much more serious. I start to model the bombing of Iran in 2005. And I did it every year for 20 years. I did this in my classes at the University of Chicago. And what I'm do, I lay out the target set, I lay out what, there's all changes, of course. The target set changes, Fordow comes on, we get the MOABs. So we get, we get the different technology changes and so forth. But the big thing that the modeling always showed is that once we, meaning America, bombed the Fordow facility, which only we could do because the Israelis didn't have

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  the large precision ordinance to be able to do it. Once we did that, we would be 90% likely to destroy the centrifuge industrial, the, the enrichment capability of the facility of Fordow. But we would have virtually no knowledge of whether we destroyed the 60% enriched uranium, the actual fizzle material. And that's critical, Chris, because building a bomb is a piece of cake. Once you have the enriched material, most people don't know that. I also teach my students how to build a bomb. So, so like take them through the soup to nuts so they really understand. It's the fizzle material. And then the modeling, and this is what I told my class, and I have the slides and so, so forth.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  And I put them on my Substack. And I said, then what, what happened is if we bombed Fordow, then a year or two later, we would do regime change bombing. Not just come back and bomb in general, we would literally do regime change bombing. And why would you do regime change bombing? Back to your question, kind of link and connect all the dots. It's because you would become, once you bombed Fordow, you couldn't track for, with high confidence, the dispersal of that fizzle material. And we know, we have civilian satellites showing that a couple of days before we bombed Fordow, stuff's coming out of Fordow. We have civilian satellites showing that Estefan, another site in February of this year,

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  a month before we do the bombing, Iran is digging stuff out. We think that maybe they moved the stuff from Fordow to Estefan, and now they're digging it out. So this issue of a nuclear weapon, I think, is really quite serious. Now, Israel, I think, is playing a role, but I, in my, I think it's secondary because they have been arguing to do this for, every year, for 20 years. What made the difference here, I believe, was the concern that we couldn't track the fizzle material. And that's still going on to this day. That's why we're worried about Pickaxe Mountain, very specific. So what all that means, Chris, is we're in an escalation trap.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  The trap didn't just start with killing the leader on February 28th. It starts with the bombing of Fordow. And that's the stages I published literally several days before we killed the leader. I escalation trap, I laid out the stages of what would come, would kill the leader.

• 1:16:20Chris Williamson?

  Is it following your predictive game plan thus far?

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  Yes, and that's what's so scary about this. It's, and what I'm really concerned about is we are coming now to a serious stage of the escalation trap that's going to start next week and the following week. So I've been laying out on my Substack, the escalation trap, the nightmare scenario for how this is going to escalate to get worse. And that nightmare scenario, which I started laying out in July, was the rise of gas prices in the United States. Well, I don't know if you've been tracking it, but in Chicago, they're going up. And what that is doing, and, and what this is doing is it creates the opportunity for Iran to really close and try to shut down Hormuz.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Why? So that they can try to damage Trump politically in the midterms to irrevocably destroy his presidency. And why is, and what did I say that was going to do? That was going to energize the Trump administration to start fighting back. And what is, what are we going to see literally tomorrow with Scott Bessett? Is D-Day, okay? Now, it's an economic D-Day, but that economic D-Day is, Iran's already talking about further escalation here. If Iran escalates, are we really just going to sit back and say, oh, sure, we're gonna? No, there's a real danger. We're in the spiral phase of the escalation trap.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  As those gas prices went up, this created a window of maximum leverage for Iran. They're using that maximum leverage to wreck Trump's presidency in the, for the midterms. And I think that what President Trump is doing is trying to figure a way to, it's not just how to deal with Iran now. It's what does he do to show he is going to do something as Iran is really doing great damage to our economy and his presidency?

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  We're, we're seeing the collapse of the global economy because for the past 30, 40 years, there's a very simple deal that governed the world, which is that the United States would provide protection to the GCC and to Japan, and in return, Japan and the GCC would buy US treasuries. And that was the deal that made the American economy so vibrant. The GCC now is being destroyed by this war. And because Japan gets most of its oil from the GCC, the Japanese yen is weakening, which means that these two regions of the world that provided most of its liquidity, especially the United States, they can no longer do so. So what Scott Bessett is worried about is

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  the GCC and Japan can't buy US treasuries. And so, and so what that means is the United States cannot refinance. It's $42,000 debt. This is, this is the apocalypse, this is a catastrophe. This is not just a short war.

• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  We should also take a look at the other side. What Iran is experiencing, what is happening in Iran? This is not simply the United States. There's a significant split happening in Iran. A speech the other day made by a major leader said, look, our people are starving. We cannot continue this war. Okay. The Artesha is there, which is the secular army. So in other words, look at this war, not just from our side and the consequences to us. See the pain on the other side. Okay. So we assume that the RGC is super powerful, can continue to do anything it wants, has no resistance.

• 1:19:58Speaker 03

  We forget that there was about 20,000 people killed in an uprising before the war. Okay. That division is not gone.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  Iran has been under sanctions for the past 50 years. It's a poor place. People are used to being poor. Are Americans going to put up with $10 gallon gas prices?

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• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  So for 30 years, I've been studying air power, economic sanctions, blockades. I've focused on American political violence. So again, it's the intersection of these military action and politics.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  One thing that's very important to know in advance of what Scott Besson is about to tell us is since World War I, not going back before World War I, since World War I, even heavy economic pressure alone, I mean alone without other military force, has never won a major war. Never won a major war. All I want, and this is going to be a big sub stack tomorrow as I put this out. All I want is I want the reporters at that news conference to ask a very simple question. So the British blockade on Germany in World War I did not defeat Germany, even though it killed over 700,000 German civilians.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  And we still had to have ground power to end that conflict. So the economic sanctions on Japan before World War I and then during World War II, and then during World War II itself, did not stop us from bombing its cities using the atomic bomb. And then also Russian entry into the war with ground forces. That's how we defeated Japan. If we look at Iraq from 1990 to 2003, it was our American military that kicked Saddam out of Kuwait. And once Saddam was out of Kuwait from 91 to 2003, we had sanctions that crushed the Iraqi economy by 50% each year for all those years. And what did we have to do? 150,000, you see, you get my point.

• 1:23:03Chris Williamson?

  Every time you speak, I feel like I'm treading on eggshells. I'm like, I don't want to know what comes next.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Well, now you feel, now you see what it was like when I taught for the Air Force.

• 1:23:11Chris Williamson?

  Fucking awful.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  That's how they describe it, the prison of pain. He gets you in the data, so you can't get out.

• 1:23:18Speaker 03

  We see Iran as a completely united country, no factions and so on and so forth. Okay. That's obviously an illusion because there are always factions and so on and so forth. So I'm not saying that it's economic force, but there were great divisions that we saw before. Those divisions are still there in some ways. So the question is not just the economic consequences, but also the fact that it's very rare to have a country that is totally united in this way. And this is not the country like that.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  So George, the external force is bringing those divisions closer together. They're not breaking them apart.

• 1:24:00Speaker 03

  I profoundly disagree. They can sometimes push them together. Sometimes I say, as we did in the Vietnam War.

• 1:24:07Chris Williamson?

  Have you seen the all the footage?

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  What's the case since World War I? All I need is one case.

• 1:24:12Speaker 03

  One case?

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  One case where our external pressure, our economic pressure, where we've had, and again, I just gave you four. You have another five.

• 1:24:22Speaker 03

  I particularly said, and I'm meaning economic pressure. I'm talking about the inherent differences within this vast country.

• 1:24:32Chris Williamson?

  Why does that matter?

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  It matters because when the attacks start to happen and the pain starts to rise, they become more powerful in the sense that others look at them and say, you were right. This was not the government we should have. So.

• 1:24:48Chris Williamson?

  But did they not already try and uprise before and that didn't work?

• 1:24:51Speaker 03

  Of course, no, they killed them all. Now, what did these circumstance?

• 1:24:55Chris Williamson?

  Is that going to stop?

• 1:24:57Speaker 03

  Well, this is the fundamental question. Okay.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  And all we need is a case, George. Just give us even a case of bombing. So let's widen it beyond military pressure. Where is the case that without ground forces, bombing alone wrecked the government?

• 1:25:13Speaker 03

  And the answer is that the question in my mind is not bombing. Okay. It is the disunity of the country itself, which we saw the weeks before the war began.

• 1:25:25Chris Williamson?

  Is your suggestion that if Iran had sufficient disunity inside, that the government would choose to give up because it's got so much pressure happening internally?

• 1:25:37Speaker 03

  What I'm saying is the government itself, the statement that was made and was transmitted all over the world by this leader of the RGC, a former head of the RGC, that we must not continue this. So I'm saying that the, as in Vietnam, the government was, US government is completely frequently divided on what should be done.

• 1:25:59Chris Williamson?

  At least from what I know, tiny amount I know about Iran. I don't get the sense that the government is going to be too concerned about the quality of life of its citizens to give over to what Trump's pressures are going to be. Am I right or wrong?

• 1:26:12Speaker 03

  All I have is one speech from the former president that was published. He is still alive, apparently. So when you take a look at a country, take a look at the fragments within our own country, and don't assume that this country is totally united or simply afraid of the regime. The regime itself is divided. We've seen it. Unless this speech that I saw and everything it's translated was made up by something, buddy. This represented a significant thing. Now, the Pakistani head of the military is coming to talk to the Iranians. If he's, he may already be there. Okay.

• 1:26:57Speaker 03

  There's been talk this morning about Iran being allowed to become part of the entity that was created. In other words, wars don't end because of the bombings. I totally agree with you. They grin through political processes sometimes within countries. You don't totally defeat them.

• 1:27:18Speaker 03

  But we have to be aware that these are human beings. They're not all fanatics to where you die.

• 1:27:26Chris Williamson?

  Well, I think there's a difference between do we see all of the citizens of Iran as supporting a regime that we are concerned about, that might be part of global terrorism or something like that? I don't think anybody is making that claim. I think the concern is no matter what's going on internally, whether it's divided or cohesive, whether they're in support or against, like the war is going on from the people at the top of Iran and the people at the top of America, regardless of what the people below that.

• 1:27:57Speaker 03

  But somebody who is at top of Iran, this man, made this speech.

• 1:28:02Chris Williamson?

  But he's no longer in power, right?

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  No, he's not in power.

• 1:28:05Speaker 03

  He's not in power, but he has tremendous influence.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  Hmm. That's what, that's, look, here's the, since World War I, starts with Julio Duhé. He wrote a book, Command in the Air, mostly has to do with air power. There's been a hope with either economic blockades or air power, that air power or blockades without a ground force could incite a popular revolt to topple the government so that we.

• 1:28:30Chris Williamson?

  We don't want to do it, you do it for us.

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  Exactly. And this has been a hope and it hasn't happened.

• 1:28:35Speaker 03

  No one, I have not talked about toppling the government. I am saying that the government itself is split in various ways. The RGC is not totally unified. As we go into wars, we are not totally unified and sometimes disunification. We have to take a look at the internals.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  So, so one factor that we need to look at is that right now the Iranians have chosen to adopt something called the Mozak Defense, which is a decentralized command and control military warfare, which means that it's entirely possible no one is in charge of Iran right now. So it doesn't really matter what the people want, it doesn't really matter what the leadership wants, because you have thirty-one commanders spread out all over the country, and as long as one of them wants to keep on fighting, the Shavon Moos will remain closed, and this war will continue. That's a problem.

• 1:29:31Chris Williamson?

  Sounds like decentralization, but it might just be leaderlessness in that way.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  It's, they run the government through consensus. We saw this with the Taliban in Afghanistan as well. So it's, there's different models for how you govern. Some are very rigid top-down. Gaddafi ran his government very rigid top-down. That's absolutely the case. Others are more very, very decentralized, fragmented almost. I don't think that's where Iran is. Iran is in this middle of consensus, and it's hard to see because this is where the Supreme Leader, when he made a statement, remember the MOU? The Supreme Leader made a statement saying that he personally didn't agree with the MOU, but he was going to give it a chance and support those who did, which meant there was a division, just as George is saying,

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  and that side of getting a negotiated outcome won in, on June seventeenth. That has now been replaced, I believe, by the other side, the Supreme Leader's side, and that's what you see with the replacement of the whole command structure of the IRGC in the last several weeks. It's all in one direction.

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  The MOU was a major turning point, because before the MOU, I think George is right, there were these factions.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  Yep, I agree.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  And the MOU was compromised, and what the Americans have shown is, for a reason, they will not abide by the terms of the MOU. And so the Iranians, at some point, said, screw this, we are not going to negotiate, we are not going to compromise, we're going to fight this to the end. So now the Houthis have been brought into the war, and this war is just expanding very rapidly.

• 1:31:12Chris Williamson?

  What do you think is the likely outcome of the Iran war?

• 1:31:15Speaker 02

  It doesn't end. It, what's going to happen is eventually the Ukraine war and the Iran will merge. Already we're seeing that after Zelensky bombed an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, and Iran, and Zelensky was very proud of this. Like, you, you see, I can do this for, for the Americans. So it is very likely that all the war powers are brought, are brought in. China is brought into the war, Russia is brought into the war.

• 1:31:41Chris Williamson?

  This sounds a lot like the World War III that we said wasn't going to happen at the top of this episode.

• 1:31:45Speaker 03

  Except it's not the world.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  So, I didn't say that. Did I say that? No, no, he, no, he, no, he actually thinks World War III is, is kind of coming quickly.

• 1:31:53Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  Here's where my, here's where I would, so I see the trends that Jiang is saying. I don't want to disagree with the trends. I think January of this year is going to be a focal point moment.

• 1:32:05Chris Williamson?

  January of next year.

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  Of next year. I mean, January two thousand twenty-seven will be a focal point moment where all the actors, the United States, China, Iran, have a chance to reset. Now, where they go, here's what I, but why January? Keep, go back to what I just said, which is, Iran has a strategy for the US midterms. It sees the oil inventories running down, it sees its period of maximum pressure. The opportunity here is to destroy Trump's presidency politically. Not to knock him out of office, but so that he is the lamest of lame ducks. Well, will that happen or not? We'll know quite a bit in the first week in January.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  Now, we won't necessarily know a hundred percent, but we'll know a lot of information. And I believe what's going to happen is, once we get to the first week in January, everybody will be recalibrating for a post-Trump world now, or a future Trump world.

• 1:33:08Chris Williamson?

  How do you feel about this?

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  Look, the problem is, we're trying to see this from an economic lens, and the reason why the MOU fell apart is Israel refused to abide by the terms. One of the major terms of the MOU signed between the United States and Iran is that all terms, all peace terms that apply to Iran would also apply to Iran's allies, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon. And that required Israel to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. Israel refused to do so, and Israel has only accelerated its attacks on Hezbollah. So we think that it's entirely between the United States and Iran, but Israel has a lot of options. And

• 1:33:55Speaker 02

  right now, for a reason, we can discuss this, Israel is choosing to escalate the war. And, and also, the Houthis have been brought in. And the thing about the Houthis is that they are religious fanatics. They are, they are, they are very poor people, they live in mountains, and they're not afraid to die. And right now, they're fighting this war against Saudi Arabia. So Saudi Arabia, Aramco facilities are being hit. The, the other strait in the Middle East, the Bab El Mandad Strait, has been closed by, by the Houthis. So we're seeing this war escalate. And again, we're trying to see this from economic lens. But if you, if you look at what the Houthis are, Houthis are doing, if you look at what the IRGC and the Israelis are doing, I would say this is almost like a religious war. It's

• 1:34:39Speaker 02

  a crusade. It's an eschatological war.

• 1:34:41Speaker 03

  But there's another dimension we have to see. The alliance between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Now, if you take a look at a map all around them, these countries, Saudi Arabia has no use for Iran. The Turks are seeking to evolve themselves into a major point, scaring the Israelis to death. And Pakistan itself is evolving dramatically in this war at a very sophisticated state. So when you take a look at the situation in Iran, let's not just talk about the bombing and everything, but the geopolitical development.

• 1:35:22Speaker 03

  Now, today, there was a story, I don't know if it's true or not, that Iran is going to be asked to join this coalition. In other words, submit. Whether they do it or not, whether this is an actual offer, I have no idea, but it was there. But this created a new structure in the Middle East, this alliance, a very different one, with a very powerful country. Israel is terrified of Turkey, because they know they do.

• 1:35:52Speaker 02

  It's bombed. Turkish officials in Syria.

• 1:35:57Speaker 03

  By, my, yes, and that was part of it, because this is a country they cannot defeat. They've only fought countries along their borders, and they were able for, since the founding of Israel, to hold those borders. The Turkish army is three times as large as the Israeli army. And while I don't believe that the Turks really have any desire to fight them, these Israeli, shall we say, societies built around a commitment to the belief that they're going to try to destroy us. There is a built-in paranoia. So when

• 1:36:42Speaker 03

  this ends, you know, this problem ends a little bit, they bomb Syria. They then tell the American ambassador they didn't bomb Syria. Then they say, Turkey is our greatest fear, built into Israel by na, by history, is a paranoia. Who is my greatest enemy? I have one. Now they're facing, for the first time, an enemy that they cannot, because of both geography and military capability, defeat. All right? Now.

• 1:37:22Speaker 03

  When one said was asked what to do after the Battle of Bulge, she said, make peace, you fools. And this is the situation that Israel is in. It's an internal crisis. It has reached a point where its military capability is not enough.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  So the reason I think the midterms are a decisive threshold.

• 1:37:42Speaker 03

  And I agree.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Not just a minor threshold is it will determine whether the Democrats control Congress. If the Democrats control Congress, which is still an if, but we'll know in January, there is going to be two things that are going to happen. And we see this in the Democratic policies already. Number one is there'll be tremendous pressure to literally end the Iran war. So we saw this in 1974 by Congress. Congress has not played much of a role in foreign policy. The last time it got involved was 74 with Vietnam to truly constrain the executive. There'll be a battle about this, of course, but number one is the Democrats wanting to shut down this, and that would stop it from becoming a forever war. Which, one more, one more point, and then I'll let you.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  The second point is they're going to want to constrain Israel. There's a huge push in the Democratic Party to shut down all of the, look at all the Democrats that are, that were pro-Israel that are losing. And they're losing because there's a huge movement inside of the Democratic Party to zero out the budgets to Israel. And that means that come January, Israel's going to have to calibrate Iran. Others are going to calibrate based on the results of whether the Democrats control Congress. Now, we don't know whether the Democrats will control Congress, but what I'm saying

• 1:39:09Speaker 01

  is it's too soon to truly project out beyond January because come January, we'll know, are we in a forever war? And by the way, if the Democrats, even though they control Congress, support the war, oh yeah, we're in a forever war.

• 1:39:25Speaker 02

  So which major Democratic leader has come out against the war and which leader has said, we must end this war right now? Which, which leader?

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Oh geez, almost all of them. I mean, just watch CNN, they come on all the time. So what they're, if you, if you listen, Zhang, to the Democrat, no, if you listen to the Democratic leaders, this has just been a mantra to end the Vietnam War, I'm sorry, to end the Iran War. And the real question is going to be, Zhang, whether or not, once they control, will it take responsibility for that? Because right now, it's easy to run against the Iran War because gas prices going up, you know, bad mistakes by the, the Trump administration, which they hate, they hate anyway. Where it will become difficult will be once the Democrats assume power, because if it

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  turns out that the Democrats stop the war and Iran gets a nuclear weapon, think about that for the Democratic Party. That could bring the Republicans right back in in 2028. So I think these are the real issues, and that's why it's about not just what you claim you're going to do, but what you do when you're in power.

• 1:40:38Speaker 02

  So, so I must have missed the news, but can you name me one major Democratic leader, whether it's Chuck Schumer?

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  Well, Hakeem Jeffries was just on CNN, I think it was three days ago, arguing that the war should end now. I just listened to the woman who just ran the progressive, who just won the Senate for the Senate seat in the primary here on Florida. I was just on a podcast with her, the Joy Reid Show, just two days ago, talking about this issue, and she was hugely against the, against the war and thought it was a total mistake and it should end. So, I mean, those are at least two people right there.

• 1:41:14Speaker 02

  So, so did Hakeem Jeffries say that if the Democrats worked in the House in November, they would immediately try to restrict Trump's war powers and try to?

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  I haven't said anybody has gone that far. That's the next step. That's the real issue here. And that's what I'm saying is you won't be able to know whether they'll do it until they're in power, Zhang. And if they're in power and they support the war for fear that they will lose their political viability, as Hillary Clinton was worried about with the Iraq War, then this will, that's how you got a forever war. You get both parties in favor of the war because neither one will stop it. Now you have a forever war.

• 1:41:56Speaker 03

  But in this particular case, both the Republicans oppose the war because that's one of the bases on which he won the election was not to get into these forever wars. The Democrats also are doing it. When you take a look at the poll numbers on this war, they're enormously unpopular. Congress tends to do what's popular and ending the war is popular, not only in the Democrats, but with the Republicans. This is the fundamental difference that I've never seen, which is that his own party feels betrayed. So I think there's, one of the things I think the Iranians are saying, let's wait, let's wait to see if they come apart.

• 1:42:39Speaker 03

  The same way I'm talking about Iran having internal problems, we have enormous internal problems. I'm seeing the Iranians trying to put this off as long as possible and then try to make a deal at, in September or October before the elections.

• 1:42:57Chris Williamson?

  It's so fascinating that Trump's positioning and his desire to be seen as a competent president, and obviously the last couple of years of his legacy, that is being used as a geopolitical tool. That's almost a weapon that other people can insert themselves into because they know that this is going to be, it's a point of weakness, or it's a point of leverage that can be used to play with the incentives that the US has got. Do they want to push further? Do they want to pull back?

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  This is something I've seen in, again, advise for White Houses, 2001 to 24, two Democrat, two, two Republican. Legacy matters to, let's call it the White House, if not the President. I also think the President, but let's just make it that legacy is beyond just getting the next win. Legacy is what you're remembered for. And I think this is what is important that we miss when we talk about Presidents in the United States. We think, well, you can't run for reelection again, therefore you don't care anymore about anything. Uh, no, I think what they, what I see is even in their first term, they're thinking about their legacy going forward.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  And that legacy, there have only been 47 Presidents in our history. There's not that many Presidents.

• 1:44:24Chris Williamson?

  Not a big sample size.

• 1:44:25Speaker 01

  So I really, well, it's not that, it's that they know they're one of 47 or 48. It's the other way around, Chris. It's because it's a tiny club, their legacy is going to be with them after they're dead for 100 years plus.

• 1:44:39Speaker 02

  But if he's so worried about his legacy, why did he attack Iran in the first place?

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  I think, again, back to the modeling. I'm just going to keep going back to the modeling because I, I made a prediction to my classes for 20 years in a row, that once we bomb Fordow.

• 1:44:57Chris Williamson?

  But why?

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  We would panic about Iran getting a nuclear weapon in a way we couldn't see, and we would get intel, whether it's Israel or somebody else, that was showing us they were getting intelligence, and we would try to resolve it through regime change. Not because regime change was magically thought to be a better strategy, but it was really the only way you could come up with even a half plausible idea.

• 1:45:23Chris Williamson?

  Was your question about why to do the bombing in the first place, though?

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  So, so, so I want to-

• 1:45:27Chris Williamson?

  Take a step back from that.

• 1:45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I, I want to present another theory, okay, besides your modeling.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:45:32Speaker 02

  So 1996 is a clean break memo.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  Right? And you probably know the people who wrote that, right?

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  Richard Pearl, Douglas Five. Paul Wolf was from my department, Zhang.

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  71 PhD, University of Chicago. So I know these people pretty well.

• 1:45:46Speaker 02

  So, so just for some, for some context.

• 1:45:48Chris Williamson?

  For the idiot in the room, thank you.

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Clean Big Memo was a proposal to Benjamin Netanyahu. And the argument is that, that Israel, under Netanyahu, should withdraw from the peace law, from the, sorry, from the Oslo Peace Accords. Because in order to assure peace in the Middle East, Israel had to be strong. It had to conduct regime change in Iraq and Syria. Also, Israel needed to be self-sufficient economically and militarily. It needed to basically stop being dependent on the United States. And if you want to resolve the passing issue, then you beat the crap out of them. Rather than try to compromise and give them land, that would just make them more greedy. Instead, you, you establish peaceful strength.

• 1:46:34Speaker 02

  Those are the exact terms, peaceful strength. Okay, so that's the 1996 Clean Big Memo. Why that's important is if you look at the Clean Big Memo and you look at today, they basically implemented every single point of the Clean Big Memo, right? Every single point, that's number one. Number two is, what's interesting is, the people responsible for the Clean Big Memo, Richard Pearl, Douglas Five, went on to work in the Bush administration, and they were, along with Paul Wolf, which is your friend, the architects-

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  No, my friend.

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  Okay, sorry.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  No, no, no, that's going too far.

• 1:47:06Speaker 02

  But the three of them, okay, the three of them in the Pentagon were the architects of the Iraq War. Right? And then after 9/11, Wesley Clark appears on stage with Amy Goodman, and Amy Goodman, Amy Goodman is like, what's the plan? And Wesley Clark is like, we're going to go after seven nations in five years. And these seven nations include Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, and there's one more, Iran. So if I'm just looking at it from like a, like top-down bird's eye view, I would say that this was, was always a plan, ever since 1996, the Clean Big Memo, to attack Iran

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  eventually, because they've been saying this for the past 30 years. And so-

• 1:47:58Speaker 02

  Isn't that a good reason to attack Iran? Because that was always the plan.

• 1:48:02Speaker 01

  So let me, first of all, number one, I agree with your characterization of the Green Break, Green Break Plan. Number two, I agree it was a plan. What I see from 2005 on, and I was working with the Bush administration about how to essentially calm down the Iraq war. So I had many, many interactions here with the Bush administration because I was warning before we did Iraq that we would touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times. We did invade Iraq. We did touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times. And who started my center at the University of Chicago? The Chicago Project used to be on suicide terrorism. It was actually the Bush administration. Think about that for a moment.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  Because suddenly, somebody made a unique prediction. None of other terrorism expert was predicting that. And I gave it directly to Paul Wolfowitz here. He was, did Iraq anyway. He touched it off anyway. And so now, suddenly, I'm engaging with, with them. We never put an army in a certain African country. Think Somalia, that was a possibility. That did not happen. Certain things that did not happen also are important to know. So, one of the things that happened during this period after the Iraq war became a disaster is all that influence by Wolfowitz left, Firth left, Pearl left.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  And it's because it became widely understood what the real dangers were of going into Iran. Much, I mean, Iraq was already a problem, but Iran is a much bigger, I said, the biggest challenge since Germany in World War II. This was widely understood at the time. And it's widely understood by the military. It's widely understood in both white Democrat and Republican White Houses. This is not a unique situation here. I think you really run into an issue with why did President Trump bomb Fardel? So I've talked to the people from the administration who have left in detail about this in, in May.

• 1:50:13Speaker 01

  I think you have to understand one thing, which is although President Trump decided to reject Netanyahu in his first administration, President Trump has become his own national security advisor, his own Secretary of Defense, his own Secretary of State. If you look at all the decisions that are happening, everybody else is essentially executing his policies. And occasionally, he'll get mad at them and blame them for something. But he's not really following closely the advice of any of those people around him. I think what's happening is that our president, our system gives the president inordinate

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  discretion when it comes to the use of force.

• 1:51:01Chris Williamson?

  You're saying that this was a personal bias and a whim?

• 1:51:04Speaker 01

  I think it was, yes, largely so. But I would say it's because, I would say that what you're seeing here is that the style of president, what, what, it doesn't matter, if, if he fires Pete Hegseth next week, or he fires Scott Besant next week, do we really think the style of the president is going to change? I think that we need to understand that we, our system of government, we have given inordinate power to the president. I'm not calling for a change of the Constitution, but I am saying that that means if the president wakes up one day and

• 1:51:41Chris Williamson?

  Wants to press the button.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  And by the way, Abraham, there's famous Abraham Lincoln, famous story in Doris Kern Goodwin's of, a team of rivals, where Abraham Lincoln goes around the table, asks the entire cabinet, and, and they all say, no, no, no, no, no. And they come to the, and Lincoln's, and, and Lincoln says, I, and gentlemen, the eyes have it. This is what happened.

• 1:52:01Speaker 02

  What does Trump have against Iran? He can't even find Iran on a map.

• 1:52:07Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, he can't. Well, look, I have

• 1:52:09Speaker 02

  I guarantee you cannot do it.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  Well, look, I think we've pushed, we, I, I like to talk to people directly. I've never, in this case, everybody I've talked to who's been around this, who've actually briefed the president on this, they only go so far in willing to say why he did certain things. And I'm saying it's because of the way he has chosen to make his decisions. There's not the process we're used to seeing here. So what that would mean is, and I've never talked to President Trump, is unless I could actually talk to Trump, I won't go further than I've currently said. Because I do think that this is though how we got here. And once he did Fardel, I don't know that at all he understood the consequences, but

• 1:52:55Speaker 01

  I think then he was sunk, Jiang. Because once he did that, and he sees the satellite imagery I'm seeing in the civilian world, and there's probably more, he, he knows if they develop, if they test nukes on his watch, man, he sunk for all of his

• 1:53:10Chris Williamson?

  Jiang, what's your psychoanalysis of

• 1:53:11Speaker 02

  So, so, so, let's just look at his pattern of behavior in his, both his first term and second term, right? First term, he comes to office, he, he, he cancels the JCPOA, which is the Iran nuclear deal under Obama, right? He's like, we're not doing this anymore, guys. That's number one. Then he recognizes, sorry, then what he does is he transfers the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is one of the most provocative acts an American person has ever done in the Middle East. You don't, you don't do that. Okay, that's number two. Number three is, he recognizes Israel's control of the Golden Heights. Then the, the most dramatic thing he does is, in January 2020, he orders the assassination

• 1:53:54Speaker 02

  of General Qassem Soleimani, who was Iran's de facto ambassador in the Middle East. So Fardel, this seemed a logical extension of his actions. He is the most pro-Israel president the United States has ever had. Right? It seems like, if you just look at the Green Break memo of 1996, and you look at what, what Trump is doing in, in the Middle East, it seems like he is trying to create the Greater Israel Project. Do, do, do you, sorry, do you know what the Greater Israel Project is? Right. So the Greater Israel Project is the idea that Israel should occupy all biblical lands, or the lands that Yahweh, God, promised to Abraham.

• 1:54:37Speaker 02

  And these lands extend from Egypt, from, sorry, extend from the Nile in Egypt, all the way to Ufrides in Iraq. So if you look at the entire map of what the United States has been doing for the past 20 years, attacking Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now this war, which promised to engulf Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, it seems like this is all to achieve the Greater Israel Project.

• 1:55:07Speaker 01

  But if he was only interested in Israel, why Venezuela? Why Greenland? Why Canada?

• 1:55:15Chris Williamson?

  Well, you gotta have something to do on the weekend.

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  Well, what I'm just, what I'm pointing out, what I'm pointing, so I agree with you, that's the second most important reason, Israel. I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all. I think that what we need to see is that, first of all, President Trump is really enthralled with the use of violence. Enthralled with the use of violence. He's part and parcel of violent populism. He's both a cause and a symptom of it at the same time. And it's not just

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  In his first term, he did not start a war. Well, he kept his promise, I will not start new wars.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  And violent, and after January 6th, I think the process leading up to January 6th, and then in chapter five of the book, I track, I trace this out, that in aftermath of January 6th, this has radicalized MAGA. MAGA is not the same sort of group, political movement.

• 1:56:05Chris Williamson?

  We're talking about international policy, not just internal

• 1:56:07Speaker 01

  Yes, but once you have norm, once political violence is normal for you at home, it's a lot easier to use it abroad.

• 1:56:14Chris Williamson?

  He was in office from way before Trump.

• 1:56:16Speaker 01

  Well, what I'm trying to tell you is that it, it, there's a, there's a trajectory that's emerging. It's not that he comes in planning on, you know, 2017 to do January 6th. There is a, a trajectory that emerges. And I think that we're, we need to see that, yes, Israel's playing a role, but there's a lot more that he is doing.

• 1:56:35Chris Williamson?

  Do you think the number one reason is this escalating acceptance?

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  Normalization of political violence. It is the thing that is underneath him.

• 1:56:43Speaker 03

  But there's something else to look at. I think there is also, in Trump, a fear of a 9/11. And there's, in ways, it should be, okay? So when you take a look at Iran, and their relationship with Al Qaeda, ruined, but still there, something comes to mind at times, which is what would happen if, instead of 9/11 happening with aircraft, a ship sailed in with a nuclear weapon to New York Harbor and detonated. So given the ideology of Iran, given the fact that they have nuclear materials, and so, and the presence of Al Qaeda, we can say, we can say all the various things we

• 1:57:28Speaker 03

  say about Trump in various ways, and I agree with much of them, there's also a rational fear that could evolve. This is why his fundamental demand has been the nuclear weapons. Now, he attacked them first, he claimed it succeeded, it failed, okay? And we really don't know, I think, for sure where the nuclear capabilities are. We don't know how to destroy them, and we're looking at that. But I think that underneath it, if you take a look at the question of what happens if there's a nuclear weapon, especially a secret one, developed in Iran, given the ideology, what might happen?

• 1:58:12Speaker 03

  And I think in many ways, when you look at, you know, how we will be viewed in history, from, from that, if that were allowed to happen under his watch, would he also driving him?

• 1:58:26Speaker 02

  Do you think the JCPOA was working?

• 1:58:31Speaker 03

  It didn't fail. What it was working is another matter. The fundamental thing was to de-nuclearize these areas.

• 1:58:40Speaker 02

  So if Trump is most concerned about Iran developing a nuclear weapon, why did he withdraw from the JCPOA?

• 1:58:48Speaker 03

  Because I, he wanted more control, I think. I have no idea what has been through his mind. He wanted to have a direct American control on that. He thought that would be more effective. When you take a look at his practices, okay? He clearly doesn't go through reliance systems. It doesn't want to have dependence on others. He wants that power in his own hand. He can't have it. He does it as well. I don't, I can't psychoanalyze him. But what I see happening is that, and this is something I wrote on, the fundamental fear was the nuclear 9/11. And he keeps coming back to that.

• 1:59:27Speaker 02

  So if he was, if you're afraid of a nuclear weapon, he should have avoided three things, okay? One is withdraw from the JCPOA. Second is do not assassinate the al-Ittihad. Cause he, he didn't, he refused to ever use a nuclear weapon. And number three is do not attack Iran. And Trump did all three things.

• 1:59:47Speaker 03

  Yes, but that doesn't mean that the operational action didn't have a certain end in mind. So in other words, it was rational to be concerned about it. He proceeded irrationally in action.

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  Yes, and I think the choice set is interesting here. So I agree, by the way, with, with George, that there's a rational fear of a nuclear weapon with Iran. There is an element of a rational fear of that. I think we can learn to live with it, by the way. So I don't think it means that once you're concerned about an Iranian nuclear weapon, the solution is the force direction.

• 2:00:24Speaker 02

  And I certainly agree with that.

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  But, but, but, yeah, I thought you might. But let me say that what we saw with the JCPOA was not just that Trump ripped up the JCPOA, but he replaced it with a maximum pressure campaign. So what President Trump has done very often in his career, and this is what I would say is, and this is before January 6th, but he has, there's a trajectory here, which is he is more and more comfortable with force domestically and internationally as he becomes, as he goes through his presidencies, his two presidencies. And I, that's what I mean by the normalization of it. It becomes more normal. You, you, because he didn't just rip it up, the JCPOA. He thought a pressure campaign would be better.

• 2:01:10Speaker 01

  And I think that he learned from that failure, because it didn't stop Iran, that he should have more pressure. A lot of others of us would say you should learn from that by seeing that the pressure campaign is making things worse. And I think that this is what we're, we're seeing with our president. He finds a lot of comfort in the use of political violence.

• 2:01:32Speaker 03

  He also doesn't really understand power. He overestimates what he has. He went into that war expecting it to be readily done. He did not understand the mosaic system. He did not care about responses. So one of the problems have, I don't necessarily disagree with pressure as a measure. He doesn't understand how to apply the pressure, nor does he have a clear understanding of just how much power he has.

• 2:02:05Speaker 02

  My question is, if this is just complete chaos, if this is just one guy behaving irrationally, why are all events helping to create the Greater Israel Project? That's, that's my question.

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  Well, and my challenge to you is that, explain the Western Hemisphere. Cause if you really want to build the Greater Israel Project and you look out here over time, what you would like is you'd like President Trump completely focused on the Middle East. And yet President Trump starts out with his tariffs, again, very, which not quite violent, but again, very aggressive against our own allies. Then he moves to actual military ideas with Greenland and our allies, Canada. And so what he's doing, Zhang, is it's not that I just, again, I want to be very clear. I think that Israel is the second most important driver here. This is, this is where I, I just, I think also with the 2003 Iraq War,

• 2:03:01Speaker 01

  some of the people I most respect in the world believe the number one reason we did the Iraq War in 2003 was Israel. I think it's what happened after 9/11. I think 9/11 created enormous fear of Muslims in the United States, including with the people at the very top. It wasn't only Israel.

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  Right, so one thing that people don't appreciate, appreciate about the Greater Israel Project is the major impediment to that thing is actually the US military. Because the US military provides balance of power in the Middle East. The US military provides protection to the GCC. So if Israel were to become the dominant nation, it would need a way to remove the United States from the equation, right? And this Iran war, it's, it's, it is a solution to this problem. Because if the, if the Americans send in ground troops, which is part of the escalation trap.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:56Speaker 02

  Then there's, then the United States would probably lose this war and the United States would be forced to withdraw back into the Western Hemisphere.

• 2:04:03Chris Williamson?

  Hang on, are you saying that Israel managed to convince Trump to go into Iran to do the bomb, which then gets into the escalation trap, which means that you need to put boots on the ground, which means that America ultimately loses, which means that America then has to withdraw to make room for Israel?

• 2:04:19Speaker 02

  I do not know if this was intentional. I don't know if this was planned, but it's turning out this way.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  But if you're right, Zhang, if you're right, then, and I, I did a piece on my Professor Pape Substack on this. What will happen if America truly, truly withdraws is a much smaller Israel.

• 2:04:39Speaker 03

  I think it really, yeah.

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  It becomes a nuclear Sparta. It doesn't quite get wiped off the map, but a much smaller. Yeah, Israel is much weaker.

• 2:04:46Speaker 02

  What if Israel took over CENTCOM? What if all of America's military apparatus, okay? The planes, the troops, all then became under the control of Israel, which is happening right now, right? Because you have de-basification right now in the Middle East, which means that all these planes, all this weaponry is now forced to go to Israel because it's the only safe space.

• 2:05:12Speaker 01

  Under that hypothetical, I agree with you. But what you see with, let's take the Democratic Party and about a third of the Republican Party is they're not having that. So what you see is, as that, exactly your scenario, by the way, is one of the big reasons why there's been so much anger against Israel. So there's two actors or two, two actors that are getting blamed for this war in Iran, which is wrecking the world's economy. It's number one, President Trump, and number two, it's Israel. And both of those are in deep trouble as we go forward. And that Israel's in trouble with the American public. Israel is losing the American public in droves.

• 2:05:54Speaker 03

  Israel is losing profoundly. Because Israel has always faced enemies that it could defeat. With this alliance that occurred, with Turkey evolving, Israel is much too weak to do this. Therefore, Israel has to change its fundamental strategy, which to face the fact that it's a small country in an area that doesn't welcome it, make peace. Try to find ways to enter it. So when Israel takes a look at this alliance that was formed, there are two ways to look at it. One, it might restrain non-state actors. Other, it is a massive alliance that threatens Israel.

• 2:06:36Speaker 03

  So at this point, Israel is making very strange sounds like, you know, we're going to do something about Turkey. They can't do it. Remember, this is a situation in which Israel has not found itself in, where it does not have the military power to deal with a threat. So you look at this from two sides. One, yes, I think the Israelis manipulated Trump's thinking. That was very clear. At the same time, Netanyahu has made massive mistakes in overestimating his influence and his power.

• 2:07:12Speaker 02

  Do you think Congress will pass the NDAA, which will allow Israel to access data and intelligence from the US military?

• 2:07:19Speaker 01

  Not if the Democrats take Congress.

• 2:07:21Speaker 03

  I can't imagine that happening.

• 2:07:22Speaker 01

  Not if the Democrats. And I don't even think if the Democrats don't, because I think that this is you, and you've been part of the reason that your, your attention, bringing this attention on social media, I think has been very important, Zhang. Because I think that the more sunlight that falls on that, the much less likely this is to happen. Israel's grand strategic problem from the beginning and to this day is it is 7 million Jews surrounded by three.

• 2:07:52Speaker 02

  I think.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  Well, 9 million, 7 million Jews.

• 2:07:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, sorry.

• 2:07:55Speaker 01

  No, you've got 2 million who don't.

• 2:07:57Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 2:07:58Speaker 01

  7 million Jews.

• 2:07:59Speaker 03

  That is 71 miles wide at its widest point.

• 2:08:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but 7 million Jews surrounded by 300 to 400 million Muslims, depending on how far you out, you want to count with Pakistan. So that ratio, the only way you can have Israel the greater project is with American power. So with, if you have American power withdraw completely from the Middle East with the way Iran wants it to be, and, and that may end up being the outcome, then Israel's in deep trouble. If they can't stop Iran now and those missiles coming into Iran now, with America's presence still there, what's going to happen a year or two from now when there's no military from America there?

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  Israel, those 7 million are going to be on their own up against those 300 to 400 million. I don't think this means Israel, by the way, gets wiped off the face of the map. But I do think it becomes at least a, it'll be a second tier power at best.

• 2:09:02Speaker 03

  Israel was successful in wars. It gave it an illusion of power. What is evolving now geopolitically in the Middle East is terrifying to the Israelis, particularly with the rise of Turkey. At the same time, the United States now wants to withdraw from these various conflicts and even wants to reduce our, its reliability on Israel as well. And there's movements in the United States in the public and also in strategists and stuff. The fundamental crisis in Israel is one that the Americans can't solve because the American public is not going to go that deeply into it. But there is the possibility of accommodation by Israel.

• 2:09:47Speaker 03

  Now Netanyahu does not believe in accommodation. He believes he must use force in all cases.

• 2:09:55Speaker 03

  He can't. Now, he's had a peace treaty with Egypt for many years, and it's held. The theory that Netanyahu has that no agreement with the Arabs will ever be honored. In this particular case, he's wrong, because the Egyptians did. Certainly Saudi Arabia has nothing hostile to Israel. They've been quietly working with them on intelligence matters and a range of things, okay? Pakistan has no fundamental interest in Israel. And Turkey really has many bigger fish to fry, as it evolves, than Israel. At the same time, Israel does not know how not to call attention on itself.

• 2:10:39Speaker 03

  It somehow always gets into it because its grand strategy has been, since its founding, always attack, be stronger than the other guy, but they've reached a point where they're not, and they won't be. So the question is, how does Israel evolve in this situation? Along with how does the American relationship with Israel evolve? Very deep questions for these areas. But I think you're absolutely right that Israel is at the heart of this as a problem. But at this point, it's profoundly weakening, hour by hour, almost.

• 2:11:13Chris Williamson?

  Why is it that Israel's got so much influence over the US?

• 2:11:16Speaker 01

  Oh, money. It's money. It's AIPAC. This is in the Israel lobby, John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt's book. They lay it out. And fundamentally, it's a very simple story, which is that although anybody can give money to elections, it's a free and open process. It just turns out, if you look at all the data, that Jews as a group give more money than any other group per capita, and as a group overall, about a third of all money in elections is coming from Jewish America.

• 2:11:48Speaker 03

  There is a very different reason. During the Cold War, the Soviets had relations with Syria, had relations with Egypt, and so on. The Cold War was fought there as well. When the Arabs attacked Israel in 1973, okay? It was with Soviet weapons, Soviet training, many cases Soviet tactics imposed. Israel at that point was one of the few countries that was pro-American, and who had a strategic point that it could undermine Egypt, it could undermine these things. So remember, ever since the Suez Crisis, the Soviets had gotten involved in it.

• 2:12:33Speaker 03

  The Cold War is over now. These are not relevant to this thing. But it's not simply money or something like that. That was there too. But that, when in the Cold War, you take a look at the situation that the Russians had, and the amount of influence they had, even in Lebanon and so on and so forth, destabilizing, it was deeply involved in the region. And the United States didn't have very firm allies. It had Iran as a lie, had Israel as a lie, and they were players. So that situation is obsolete. The Soviets are no longer there, and so it's irrelevant.

• 2:13:11Speaker 02

  So to answer your question, why Israel has so much power, there's an alliance between Zionist capital, basically AIPAC, as well as Christian evangelicals, which is about a quarter of the population. Among these Christian evangelicals, maybe a minority are Christian Zionists, and they believe that Israel is God's plan to save the world. So Israel has to be protected at all costs, okay? So you have this massive alliance between Zionist capital, and then you have these fanatical Christian evangelicals.

• 2:13:52Speaker 02

  So one of the most powerful organizations in the United States is something called Christians United for Israel, run by someone named John Hadji, and about 70 million members. And all they care about is Israel. So if you're a congressman, you say anything bad about Israel, you have like millions of people literally calling you up every single day, bitching at you, like literally. These are the people who are funding the West Bank settlers, and they are the main cause of friction between the Israelis and the Arabs. Because these West Bank settlers are just complete nuts. So they're crazy. So you say that, okay, in November, the Israel lobby will be taught a lesson.

• 2:14:37Speaker 02

  But if you got like this alliance in place, right, between Zionist capital, and we're talking like a lot of money, right? They put in like $30 million to defeat Thomas Massey in Kentucky. They put in $70 million to defeat Abdou El-Sayyad in Michigan. That's a lot of money for a primary, right? They have almost access to unlimited capital. They have someone like Laren David Ellison, who is able to buy up CBS News and install Barry Weiss. So this alliance is almost unprecedented in American politics. So I don't see how just disgust with Israel can negate the power of the Israel lobby.

• 2:15:18Speaker 01

  Well, you're seeing that Jewish representatives running for Congress are losing right on the left. And also, so it's not just whether they are Jews running for the American Congress, whether they are the Christian Zionists running for the Congress. And one of the big things that's underneath that is that there is a large movement among the right. So most of the evangelicals are on the right. They're not on the left. They're not Democrats. They're conservatives. Many of the folks supporting, say, Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent has run for office several times.

• 2:15:56Speaker 01

  They are folks that are extremely unhappy with the role of Israel in driving the foreign wars as they see it. I see it as a secondary factor. They agree with you, Zhang, that it's a number one factor. And what they're doing is they're voting the bums out. They're literally voting the bums out and replacing them with new people who they think are going to zero out the money for Israel. And I think they're going to hold those people to account. They want Israel's money to be zeroed out.

• 2:16:26Speaker 03

  And that is not, yeah, not realizing that the primary use of Israel is obsolete. Syria does not have Russian bases, Soviet bases. Egypt is not a Soviet power, potentially blocking the Suez Canal and so on and so forth. So Israel is once a vital asset for the United States under the circumstances.

• 2:16:51Chris Williamson?

  Surely, as long as Israel has money, it's a vital asset for the United States.

• 2:16:54Speaker 03

  No, the answer is, a lot of countries have far more money than Israel.

• 2:16:58Chris Williamson?

  Can they put it into American politics as easily as Israel can?

• 2:17:02Speaker 03

  If that was the only thing that was doing it, would that be true? On the other hand, if you go back to the Cold War and how desperate it was, the relationship between the US and Israel doesn't, isn't based on money, and nobody challenges it, because the Soviets are so powerful there.

• 2:17:22Speaker 01

  The reason this is happening now, this anger against Israel, is not just it's another forever war. It's because this is the war that's hurting the American pocketbook in a serious way. If you go back since 1991, and you can even go back further, but if listeners will just go back to 1991 and call up on Google and say, "Give me a chart of annual GDP growth or decline in the United States since 1991 to today." They're going to see some great patterns. They're going to see, number one, GDP growth goes down during the 2007, say, housing crisis, COVID. But it does not go down during the Gulf War in 91.

• 2:18:06Speaker 01

  It does not go down in Kosovo. It does not go down in 2003 when we invade Iraq. It does not go down during the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This war is different. And the reason it's different is not just it's another war in a long period of time. It's different because this is the war that Americans are feeling it in their pocketbook for real.

• 2:18:29Speaker 02

  So if it is the case that the American public is turning against Israel, and I certainly hope so, how did Thomas Massey, who was one of the most ardent anti-Israel voices in Congress?

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  Trump went after him in a big way. You got the, so Trump targeted Massey. He targeted Marjorie Taylor Greene. He targeted Massey. And when you're targeted by Trump, and we know this most from Marjorie Taylor Greene, this means assassination attempts against you and your kids and your families. So this isn't just a small, this isn't just a political targeting we're talking about.

• 2:19:06Speaker 02

  So let's summarize what you're saying. Number one is, you believe money has a significant impact on American politics.

• 2:19:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:19:14Speaker 02

  And Zionists have a lot of money to spend. Okay, that's number one. Number two is, Trump is very powerful within the Republican Party. So if he targets you, whether you be Thomas Massey or MTG, you will lose.

• 2:19:32Speaker 01

  Right, but I think Trump's influence is waning. I think it's up for grabs between now and January. That's what I'm saying. And it's what's driving the escalation trap. His desire to hold on to power is what's really driving the escalation trap between now and January. And I am willing to, I definitely agree, it's an uphill battle because of all the money and all the sort of institutionalization, as you were explaining it. That's all true. However, that can crumble within a period of just a couple of years. I don't think this idea that it will take five or 10 years. In fact, by 2028, I'm expecting there will be a candidate for the Democratic presidency

• 2:20:12Speaker 01

  of the United States that will be avowedly anti-Zionist, not just kind of on the edges. And I think this is just...

• 2:20:20Chris Williamson?

  Like, that's what they'll almost run on?

• 2:20:21Speaker 01

  I think at least one person, because, yes, almost run on, because somebody's going to be blamed for all the wreckage of this Iran war.

• 2:20:32Speaker 01

  And who are you gonna blame?

• 2:20:34Chris Williamson?

  Why wouldn't you just blame Trump?

• 2:20:35Speaker 01

  Because, uh, Trump will already be toast by that point. You're gonna, this isn't, this, this wreckage is gonna go on for a while.

• 2:20:43Chris Williamson?

  You need an, you need an active candidate.

• 2:20:45Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, we don't, we're not gonna be done blaming people because, you know, Iran.

• 2:20:50Chris Williamson?

  This Iran war is one of the biggest messes in modern history.

• 2:20:54Speaker 02

  It's the biggest mess.

• 2:20:55Speaker 01

  It's the biggest mess since we have had in our country, since, since, since really, all the, go back to all the way World War I. There's no bigger.

• 2:21:04Chris Williamson?

  Biggest mess in a hundred years?

• 2:21:05Speaker 01

  Yes, be, not because of the casualties. So we, we're used to.

• 2:21:08Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's basically been, at least on.

• 2:21:10Speaker 01

  It's the economic consequences that are so big. And as you're hearing, and I agree with his economic analysis here, he's talking about massive economic.

• 2:21:20Speaker 02

  The global economy.

• 2:21:22Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, it's massive. And I, I, I hope he's wrong. I mean, this is where I'm predicting the, you're predicting the other. And I, and I think we each hope the other is not quite right, but I am really concerned with his analysis because I can't chip away. I brought Jeff Currie on, uh, my Substack to do these, you know, sort of like what you do here, uh, here, because I think he's just an amazing economist and so forth. He's right there. I mean, so he's right.

• 2:21:48Speaker 02

  Can you give me, can, can you?

• 2:21:50Speaker 03

  Can I like to say, okay, I agree. This will be the biggest price if it doesn't end. If it ends, it'll become like those other wars that we've had in the past and it goes on. The fundamental question is, how does it end? How could it end? And so on and so forth.

• 2:22:13Speaker 03

  We don't understand, I don't understand fully the nature of political systems in Russia or in Iran and how they continue the wars. So before we're ready to say this is the biggest disaster, I would say, yes, if it continues, it will certainly be that. So far, it has not created the kind of crisis in the United States, for example, that Vietnam did by far. So it's a question of how does this end?

• 2:22:42Chris Williamson?

  How long would it have to go on for? If it goes on for another year, would you say it's the biggest crisis?

• 2:22:47Speaker 03

  I have no way to see it. Because I don't know the consequences, nor do I know how to, for the thought or what will happen in the Straits of Hormuz and so on. So if they were in the Straits of Hormuz and so on, if they were secured and the war went on, it might have one path, this is another path.

• 2:23:04Speaker 01

  But Trump, don't you see, George, that Trump's effort to end the war quickly with a victory for Trump is what is likely to create the Pyrrhic victory that's gonna go on and on?

• 2:23:16Speaker 03

  The answer is, I probably agree with you, but I'm not certain because I'm not certain about how Iran is evolving. So I agree with you certainly that if this war continues, the consequences will be massive. I also agree with you that Trump will have a great deal of difficulty ending it on his own terms. But there's a variable there that we have to take seriously. The internal capabilities.

• 2:23:45Speaker 01

  But we do have to put some probabilities between now and November, which is what, 75 days? I think between now and November to expect Iran to implode, which is possible. I wouldn't, I would say possible, but I wouldn't even give it a 10% chance between now and November.

• 2:24:03Speaker 03

  I think they're using the election to try to force Trump into a position that he has to end it, even by making massive concessions.

• 2:24:11Speaker 01

  We agree. There we agree.

• 2:24:12Chris Williamson?

  So the likelihood of Trump voluntarily ending it?

• 2:24:16Speaker 01

  Well, I think this, without more, right?

• 2:24:19Speaker 02

  0%.

• 2:24:20Speaker 01

  0%. Yeah, I think that what you're seeing is the opposite. He, he is more likely to use force or, and it's starting with economic force, to get a symbolic victory. And I don't think Iran is gonna play their part. Iran is just not willing to give him the victory that he can, yeah, they're giving him the middle finger.

• 2:24:38Speaker 03

  In the same way that we say, Trump doesn't have the power to do these things, we have to take a look at power of Iran as well. So one of the things that Trump wants is to end the war and not be a crippled president above all else.

• 2:24:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:24:57Speaker 03

  Iranians seem to be operating, trying to push it out. Now, come October, he can't, the president cannot make a deal.

• 2:25:08Speaker 03

  They're trying to force him into a position of negotiation and they're succeeding because he understands he's gonna lose power if he continues this. So now we ask the question psychologically that I can't answer. Does Trump care more about remaining powerful as president? Or more about beating the Iranians because he started the war and he wanted to be successful? I have no idea which way it goes. But Iranians, I think, are sophisticated and are using it. And using the election as a bargaining chip.

• 2:25:41Speaker 02

  If Trump wants to win this war and bring world peace and prosperity, he, he needs to do two things, okay? If he does these two things, I guarantee you, this war, this war will end, the United States will come up on top. And these two things are, one, give $2 trillion to Iran. $2 trillion in Iran.

• 2:25:59Speaker 03

  Two, excuse me.

• 2:26:00Speaker 02

  $2 trillion in Iran. The United States has $42 trillion in debt. Give $2 trillion to Iran, not a big deal. The second thing is, control Israel, embargo Israel, saying like, if you misbehave, we will cut off arms to you guys and will no longer support you, right? So withdraw from Lebanon, stop these seven wars you're fighting right now. Come to peace with the Palestinians. So if he does these, these two things, he, he will be remembered as the greatest president in US history.

• 2:26:30Chris Williamson?

  What do you think the likelihood of him doing?

• 2:26:32Speaker 02

  0%.

• 2:26:32Speaker 01

  No, no, first of all, first of all, I, I think, so, so I think that the problem with the plan, first of all, I, I think that, um, containing Israel is becoming uh, more and more part of President Trump's repertoire. He's not doing as much as I think he should be, but it's become. The bigger part is your first point. The key problem President Trump faces is he's trying to end this conflict between now and the midterms or now in, say, January, but really now in the midterms. And if he were to give $2 trillion, what would happen is Iran would say, sure, we also want you to pull all your forces out.

• 2:27:13Speaker 01

  Fine, Trump pulls all the forces out and, no, hold it, hold it, and $2 trillion. And what then is Iran gonna do? It's going to likely topple the governments in the Gulf states. It's not going to sit back and say, oh, sure.

• 2:27:29Chris Williamson?

  Because they've got free rein because there's no oversight.

• 2:27:31Speaker 01

  There's a power vacuum. What is created, what's been created now, and this would make it even worse, is a power vacuum where it used to be America preeminent, Israel on the rise, Iran decline. Well, now the power vacuum is because this is changing. And what's gonna fill that power vacuum is critical for the future. Iran, if under your plan, they will fill the vacuum, uh, for Iran and this will wreck Trump's future. This is, they, it's not just Trump won't viscerally do it. This is just going to wreck Trump's future.

• 2:28:06Speaker 02

  I did not say give Iran $2 trillion of gold. I said, give them $2 trillion, $2 trillion US dollars. Which means.

• 2:28:14Speaker 01

  Oh, it's gonna be worthless anyway.

• 2:28:15Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, that's the point. If you want the $2 trillion.

• 2:28:18Speaker 01

  No, you wanna give them a sucker deal.

• 2:28:20Speaker 02

  If you want the $2 trillion, okay, you need to participate in the global economy. You need to make sure the Middle East is able to send oil to East Asia.

• 2:28:29Speaker 01

  Well, no, this is a version of J.D. Vance's idea of pay for performance. And as I argued before, when the MOU was coming up, I advanced this whole approach to this as a business deal, I think was completely misguided. What Iran is doing is not a business deal, pay for performance like a, like playing a football player. What, what they want is power. Power is what's at issue. So that's why I'm describing is there's a power vacuum, who's gonna fill the vacuum? It's not about the money per se, it's about power. Because in international politics, that's what determines outcomes.

• 2:29:04Speaker 02

  20 years ago, um, there was a philosophy in Washington called neoliberalism. I'm not, I'm not sure if it's still around, but the idea was.

• 2:29:11Speaker 01

  It's fading fast.

• 2:29:11Speaker 02

  Well, the idea was that trade would promote peace, right? So if you wanted peace in Middle East, you just trade it with Iran. Iran has a lot of oil, you let them sell the oil and, and then you have peace.

• 2:29:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:29:23Speaker 02

  Is there anything wrong with that idea?

• 2:29:24Speaker 01

  There's nothing inherently wrong with it as long as you had a big protector like, uh, the United States that could enforce the stability on which that deal rested. And this is your point about how globalization is coming unglued. So, uh, I agree. I wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs laying out that what's happening, uh, with the Iran war is America as protector of the global rules of power, meaning stability for commerce, is simply coming unglued. So it's not just here in the Middle East, it's going to be around the world. And what, uh, in 91, when America won this stunning victory in the Middle East,

• 2:30:05Speaker 01

  it wasn't just confidence that America could police the sea lanes in the Middle East. There was confidence America could police the sea lanes globally. That's why trade went from 38% of world product to 62% of world product. Think about that. Because it became cheaper to trade. You didn't have to worry about instability as much. Now instability is back. What does that mean? Trade is more expensive, more risky insurance rates? And what does that mean? Anything that becomes more expensive, you get less of it.

• 2:30:37Chris Williamson?

  Do you think Trump's really serious about pulling out of NATO?

• 2:30:41Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't think it even, I think NATO is already dead in terms of the key element of NATO.

• 2:30:47Chris Williamson?

  But is it not symbolic to do that?

• 2:30:49Speaker 01

  It's not about that. NATO at its core is not just a political alliance. What's in Article Five is that once Article Five is declared, a US general, there's no other decision, it's a US general, Sakyur, who commands all the NATO troops, not just US troops, all the NATO troops, the British troops, the German troops, France not in NATO for this reason, and that is what NATO is. NATO is a unified, it's a warfighting unified alliance, where you decide in advance, the Americans call the shots for everybody. Who's gonna be in Europe is gonna, after what they've been through,

• 2:31:32Speaker 01

  who's gonna let America run British troops?

• 2:31:36Speaker 03

  But you should also remember that the Americans don't want to be exposed there. Always, when you're looking at Trump, okay? And he was serious about these forever wars. That he clumsily, stupidly got involved in one is true. But he hit a fundamental principle of the United States. We did not want to be involved in these wars, these endless wars that we lost. It never helped.

• 2:32:02Speaker 02

  There's actually a much simpler reason. Trump really hates the Europeans. He hates the Europeans much more than he hates Iranians. He blames, I'm serious, he blames the Europeans for his 2020 election loss. He thinks that Obama conspired the Europeans to defeat him. That's why he went out of NATO.

• 2:32:18Chris Williamson?

  Hmm, I'd be doing a patriotic disservice if I didn't bring it up. Is the UK ever seriously going to be considered in discussions of world powers moving forward again?

• 2:32:27Speaker 01

  Well, if you, so I look at percentages of a country's world product compared to world product. If you look at the UK in 1990, that was around six to six and a half percent of world GDP. What is it today? Just under 4%. So what's happened since 1990? So again, I track power with some key metrics that we can observe. And in 1990, America was 26% of world's GDP, China was 2%.

• 2:32:55Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 2:32:56Speaker 01

  And the Europeans varied from about 5 to 7%, Germany the highest. You look today, and America's flat at 26, China's up from 2 to 17. And what's happened to all those Europeans? They're down by a third or more. Who's the sucker here? So people say, we've been uncle, this is my, one of my complaints against this argument that America is uncle sucker. No, we played the Europeans here, not the other way around. And Japan, so this is why I don't worry about, Japan was over 10% of world's GDP at that point. Where are they today? 4%, 4%.

• 2:33:38Speaker 01

  So if you just, this is all World Bank numbers, people listening can go and Google it, you will see that we have been inordinate, inordinately privileged by this period called the Cold War, which this war is ending, at the expense of other countries.

• 2:33:55Speaker 03

  One of the things you should point out, however, is Japan responded by massively increasing its military power. So it did not simply look at us, at the United States, and say, where are you going? It took action, and China now worries a great deal about Japan. The Europeans thought it was an immoral act, improper, to want to pull back and depend on. The American point of view was, the EU is larger than China economically. There is no possible reason why we should be the primary defender of Europe. That was a fundamental reason for many years, but why now?

• 2:34:38Speaker 03

  So I don't think this should be put into Trump load. I think with or without Trump, this questioning of whether or not we should remain exposed in NATO, and what NATO should evolve into, would have been put on the table by any president at this point. The China example is very much what Europe should have done. We pulled back from that. The Japanese created a much, is creating a much greater force, along with the Australians, and along with the Vietnamese, who are now involved in that too. So many things are happening. So I think there are limits to what we can blame Trump for.

• 2:35:23Chris Williamson?

  We mentioned this earlier on.

• 2:35:24Speaker 01

  Well, I wasn't really blaming Trump, just to be clear. I was just showing the hole in the argument.

• 2:35:29Speaker 03

  I understand that. I'm simply saying that there's a very reasonable redefinition of Europe after Ukraine defeated essentially Russia.

• 2:35:41Chris Williamson?

  We, we mentioned this earlier on, changing demographics specifically in China, but this is happening globally. Looks like global population is going to peak 2100, something like that.

• 2:35:50Speaker 01

  And weight decline is happening, not just in the United States, but in Europe as well.

• 2:35:55Chris Williamson?

  Kiss the bottom of 10 billion, maybe? And then it's gonna do this, unless there's some intervention that we can't yet foresee. When it comes to you guys planning out how you think about the future geopolitically, how much of a curveball is the potential changing demographics? Obviously, we've got AI and robotics and automation coming in at the same time, but what it seems like China is doing is basically trying to speedrun using humans to build robots so that the robots can replace the humans once the humans have fucked off. Well, how do you think about global population decline playing into your models moving forward?

• 2:36:33Speaker 02

  So this war in the Middle East, people don't really appreciate the geopolitical consequences. So right now, we're about 8 billion people. But if you talk to economists, they'll tell you that the Earth by itself can only support about 2 billion people. The way we get around this is with fertilizer, right? So the Middle East is important, not just because it provides cheap energy, but also provides a lot of fertilizer to the world. I can't remember the exact number, maybe a quarter to a third of the world's fertilizer. So if a quarter to a third of the world's fertilizer goes offline for a year, then you're gonna have millions of people starve to death. So there's no way we will reach 9 billion people.

• 2:37:15Speaker 02

  You will see massive starvation throughout Africa at some point.

• 2:37:19Chris Williamson?

  Hang on, you think this is gonna happen? You don't think?

• 2:37:21Speaker 02

  Oh, I think it's baked in already.

• 2:37:23Speaker 01

  So I agree, maybe for a slightly different angle on this, which is, so I think about power, balance of power. You're hearing me come everything from a balance of power perspective. That's why I sometimes agree, disagree with the other. But from the balance of power, what's happening? America was preeminent from 1991 until this war. America's being knocked back because for the first time since 91, a state beat America. Just think about that. And everybody's learning that lesson, that America can be beaten. Well, that means America's global influence, that we call it the world empire, you can call it American hegemony, this is now fading fast.

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  What's going to replace it? We could say it's multipolarity. I think it's gonna be more fragmented than that. I think you're gonna see, you might even call it a emerging anarchy that's going to occur. And under those conditions here, this is because the states that used to be under America's protection, they're not under America's protection before. You're talking, we're talking about Japan building, for, so notice, we're not saying Japan getting America to come and help it, we're talking about Japan on its own. Many states around the, around the world are thinking this way. That's what I mean by an emerging anarchy. It's not really quite a multipolar world, it's more fragmented than that.

• 2:38:48Chris Williamson?

  Who would be the poles or who would be?

• 2:38:50Speaker 03

  It'll be a center. US and China have aligning interests fundamentally. And we are seeing the diplomatic process playing out. I think it will succeed with an understanding, okay? But at the same time, China is not the Soviet Union. It doesn't occupy countries. It uses economic influence in those countries, investment and so on and so forth. So it's a very different country, not too different from the United States in the way it operates as well. Although the US, US actually operates with more military power, okay?

• 2:39:27Speaker 01

  But in this emerging anarchy, you will see greater incentives for nuclear proliferation. For example, with greater incentive, and you already saw that with Saudi, Iran, Saudi Arabia, you will see this, these incentives start to spread as a result of this war. What will also happen as a result of the incentives for proliferation is concerns about preventive wars, preemptive wars to stop that. So we've worried about for some time, Poland might start to think about going nuclear. People are already noticing Putin has been focusing on Poland. Why would Putin focus on Poland?

• 2:40:07Speaker 03

  I'm going to Poland next week to meet the president.

• 2:40:10Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:40:11Chris Williamson?

  Ask him if he's got any nukes.

• 2:40:12Speaker 03

  The answer is, Poland is the eastern front of Europe. It cannot trust the western front because it's the alliance of the willing, okay? And with that statement, that shows it. Poland is evolving dramatically, and it has the capability and is discussing becoming a nuclear power.

• 2:40:34Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:40:34Speaker 03

  So the question of, because when I talk to them, I constantly hear back, you know, we're not counting on the United States, we have 10,000 troops there, but we're not counting on the United States. So it's evolving dramatically, and it's going to be looking at that. So I agree with you that the need to have nuclear weapons, okay? Or this supposed need for to have nuclear weapons will create it. But at the same time, I see the economic alliance between the United States and China. And I think that's going to happen, is going to create a strange pole between the two. Because they have very similar interests.

• 2:41:17Speaker 01

  I don't disagree with you, I don't disagree with Zhang. What I'm saying is, we're moving to a more war-prone world.

• 2:41:25Speaker 03

  Yep. Well, the world is fairly full of war for a while.

• 2:41:29Speaker 01

  But this is about to get much worse.

• 2:41:31Chris Williamson?

  What are the places that you're keeping an eye on with regards to conflicts that aren't just going to expand from existing ones now?

• 2:41:37Speaker 02

  North Korea, North Korea's the big one.

• 2:41:41Speaker 02

  If I'm North Korea and I'm, you know, I'm poor, but I've got nuclear weapons and Japan, China, South Korea are all distracted. Why don't I just extort everyone? Right? Why don't I just, like, you know, hold a gun to everyone's head and like just say, pay up or I'll just blow you all up?

• 2:41:59Speaker 01

  China itself has tensions with North Korea.

• 2:42:01Speaker 02

  That's right. Okay.

• 2:42:02Chris Williamson?

  Why is it, why is it the case, this, uh, whatever you want to call it, global quasi anarchist world? Why? Why, why is that happening?

• 2:42:11Speaker 01

  Because we have lived under a certain amount of stability from 1991, when the Cold War ended, the Soviet, that Cold War conflict receded. It was immediately followed by the first Gulf War, which showed America could easily beat Iraq, which was a power trying to control the world's economy through oil.

• 2:42:34Chris Williamson?

  Daddy can't look after everybody.

• 2:42:36Speaker 01

  Daddy can't take care of you anymore. Daddy's either too old, baby boomer. So maybe, you know, the big two old, daddy's too old.

• 2:42:42Chris Williamson?

  He's not got the sauce anymore.

• 2:42:44Speaker 01

  And he doesn't have all his marbles.

• 2:42:46Speaker 03

  And I'll also assert the other thing. The United States doesn't want that role. So it's not only they can't do it, it doesn't want to do it.

• 2:42:54Chris Williamson?

  So it's, it's strange to think that you can have a, a globe with a bunch of different nation states, individual countries who are competing with each other and sometimes in tension with each other, but you still kind of need somebody in charge.

• 2:43:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:07Chris Williamson?

  And now there's nobody in charge.

• 2:43:09Speaker 02

  So, yeah, you know what? If you go back to 2000, uh, the world was perfect. But then, I'm serious, the world was perfect in 2000.

• 2:43:17Speaker 01

  It was pretty perfect.

• 2:43:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:18Speaker 02

  And then the United States decided to go invade Iraq, Libya, Syria, and create all this chaos in the Middle East. Um, and, um, then it started to sanction Russia. NATO started to expand westwards. And then you have this conflict in Ukraine between Russia. So, um, I mean, I think it's hubris. Uh, so it's not just the United States becoming exhausted, it doesn't want its power. I think it's also hubris.

• 2:43:48Chris Williamson?

  So this makes the, uh, Iran war even more stupid.

• 2:43:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:43:53Chris Williamson?

  It, it sort of, uh, expedited something that was already kind of quite predictable.

• 2:43:59Speaker 01

  I've modeled other wars and conflict for years. This was the one I modeled for 20 years, year after year, in and out.

• 2:44:05Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 2:44:05Speaker 01

  And it was because this was the next German. This was the biggest problem, if we took it on, that we would find for the United States since Germany in world.

• 2:44:16Speaker 02

  That's what I'm asking, right?

• 2:44:17Speaker 01

  We're, we're, we're trying to, we're trying to tell you the reasons, but we will be debating this, Chris, for decades.

• 2:44:25Speaker 03

  If it's, I, I will agree with you that if it extends, it will be hum that. It has not extended. Let's not overestimate it yet.

• 2:44:34Chris Williamson?

  Okay, but I, I understand on that. But if you say this is a insane move, which if you give it enough time, and it's not that much time, presumably 18 months or two and a half years or something like, oh, it's a really big deal. Like if you, you, we don't need to worry about it. It wasn't that big of an error if we don't reach the end of the gangplank. It's like, no, no, no. Like you're already on the plank. You're walking. There's water either side of you. If you just about managed to turn around and then reverse your direction.

• 2:45:01Speaker 03

  And the difference between life and death is how far you go down the plank. So then it's a very.

• 2:45:07Chris Williamson?

  I disagree. It doesn't make me think that.

• 2:45:09Speaker 03

  We're still on the plank.

• 2:45:10Chris Williamson?

  I'm less com- confident about the decision.

• 2:45:12Speaker 01

  Cause you get a little wind that pushes you.

• 2:45:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Um, but it, it really is like, oh, this was the worst thing you could do.

• 2:45:20Speaker 01

  This was absolute, yes. And I think this was where, um, the real issue with President Trump walling himself off from anything like strong advisors. So if you just look at the advisors around Trump, I'm sorry, this is just an extremely weak group of advisors.

• 2:45:39Speaker 02

  And Natalie Harp as well.

• 2:45:41Speaker 03

  Well, I will also say for the American point of view.

• 2:45:43Speaker 01

  I don't want to get into the, some of the.

• 2:45:44Speaker 03

  Vietnam was far worse than this war from the American point of view. On a global point of view, it was not that terrible.

• 2:45:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:45:51Speaker 03

  But for the Americans, this was the moment.

• 2:45:54Speaker 01

  That's why after Vietnam, we could just shift over to deal with Europe, try to defend the, so Europe from the Soviet Union. This war, we're not shifting.

• 2:46:03Chris Williamson?

  Dude, if this, if this turns out, if, if, uh, history looks back and does its analysis and finds out that one guy, one morning just decided to press the button.

• 2:46:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:46:13Chris Williamson?

  Like that, oh, what, what was the motivation? Was it some deeply sought after analyst fueled thing? It's like, no, some guy just woke up and decided to press a button. You will think, how was it that we allowed power to be centralized so much behind one human who's got my season?

• 2:46:29Speaker 01

  There was a famous commercial by Hillary Clinton in 2016, which is the red phone is ringing. It's 3am and that means that was the phone to the nuclear weapons. Who do you want to answer that phone? This is the way we've built our constitution, Chris. And one person makes that decision.

• 2:46:47Speaker 03

  But I would argue that, don't overestimate, okay? If you extrapolate all the way forward, okay? But see the forces that are making Iran itself consider what to do and so on. So yes, if this war continued, it would have massive effects. It's already had significant effects. On the other hand, do not assume that we understand at this point just how far Iran can go as well. Yes, one man started this war, okay? He's failed to win it, but do not assume that this war cannot end except go on forever.

• 2:47:31Chris Williamson?

  I, I very much hope that it does.

• 2:47:33Speaker 01

  Well, and I say January, we'll know the answer to that.

• 2:47:36Chris Williamson?

  Is January kind of a point of no return for you?

• 2:47:38Speaker 01

  It's a point, it's a, it's a, it's an inflection point because in January, either President Trump will have the, uh, wherewithal to be able to continue the war or he won't. And that's because of the Democrats in Congress. So the Democrats will either win Congress or not. And if they win Congress, they'll either act to shut down the war or not. We will know this in January.

• 2:48:02Speaker 02

  The, the damage has already been done. Like a lot of the facilities, the energy facilities of, of which have been shut down. It's gonna take them six months. Let's assume the war ends today or tomorrow. It takes them six months to restart all these facilities.

• 2:48:15Speaker 03

  Yes. Well, then six months it'll get better then. So we're talking about a fundamental shift in the nature of life on earth, which could happen, but not in this shorter run.

• 2:48:29Speaker 01

  Well, well, wait a minute, but here's, I don't think the two of you are as far apart because remember you're speaking in very, very broad strokes. What he is saying is that even by January, my, my threshold, um, he's very concerned about the debt crisis. He's very concerned about the world. He's worried about the world economy. So, and your point is even if we have a, a world recession or depression, we'll recover. You two are not as far apart as you might think. Uh, but the point is, I think that we are at a bookend with this war. The one thing that won't come back is confidence in America as the protector of that global system. That's not coming back for decades.

• 2:49:12Speaker 03

  To end it is, this is exactly what we in Texas want because we had, because we served during the Cold War at the full gap. And there's really a desire of the United States in the public not to have this role. Okay? Among those of us working this, this is a natural thing to should, we should have this role. But when I talk to my neighbors, the idea that we are responsible for the world, and one of the reasons this hostility from the Texas Republicans, which are very toward Trump, very much so, is that he did

• 2:49:55Speaker 03

  what he promised he wouldn't do, get us involved again.

• 2:49:59Speaker 01

  Yes. And I'm not arguing for taking care of the world to take care of the world. I'm saying that America's primacy is not coming back.

• 2:50:08Chris Williamson?

  Is there a?

• 2:50:08Speaker 03

  And again, I will say.

• 2:50:12Speaker 01

  That means it's economy.

• 2:50:13Speaker 03

  For America.

• 2:50:14Speaker 01

  Well, the economy, losing the, if, if we are, if this is right, then the future of social security is, is not long for this world. Um, and that's a tremendous problem. I have a 97 year old, um, uh, mother-in-law and I am seeing already that we are horrendous in this country. At, I've been, um, taking care of people in their 90s and we're going to have more people living in their 90s. What if social security goes away as a result of this war?

• 2:50:45Speaker 03

  I don't know how the connection had been made that would have be possible.

• 2:50:49Speaker 01

  Well, this is his, more his area than mine.

• 2:50:51Speaker 03

  Well, I would argue that the American production and trade and everything else is critical to the world. So.

• 2:50:59Speaker 01

  It's the debt, it's these financial underpinnings that are being stressed so significantly.

• 2:51:05Speaker 03

  When you look at world trade, you look at who consumes it and who can't consume it, you know, it still has role. Okay?

• 2:51:13Speaker 02

  Artificial intelligence now accounts for 50% of GDP growth in the United States, 50% of GDP growth, or these AI data centers. Guess who's financing these data centers? The GCC. So imagine a scenario where this war continues, the GCC is no longer able to provide any financing. The bubble, the AI bubble burst. You have like millions of unemployed Americans. I mean, the consequences will, will be very dire.

• 2:51:46Speaker 03

  There's different models that may play out, that may be one of them. But I see it happening somewhat differently. Which is that the United States dominating the Western Hemisphere, not having the price to pay in terms of defense and everything else, may well get by. So the issue here is not that the world isn't changing. I think we all agree that a radical new system is emerging. Okay? We may not agree on what it would look like, but certainly it would be different. At the same time, I don't view this evolution as catastrophic from the American point of view or from the global point of view.

• 2:52:28Chris Williamson?

  Is there a conflict or a war or an area of focus that everyone's preparing for right now that probably won't happen? Is there something that a lot of attention is being paid to?

• 2:52:41Speaker 02

  Nuclear war. Nuclear war will not happen.

• 2:52:47Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 2:52:48Speaker 02

  Because there's no incentive for these nations to blow themselves up.

• 2:52:53Speaker 03

  Mad.

• 2:52:54Speaker 02

  It's, yeah, it's madness, right?

• 2:52:56Speaker 03

  Mutual assured destruction.

• 2:52:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:52:58Speaker 03

  Which is why we haven't had any such wars.

• 2:53:01Speaker 02

  Right. So I don't see any scenario where nuclear weapons are used, even tactically.

• 2:53:06Speaker 01

  I think that before the war started on February 28th, I put the odds of a nuclear weapon being used by the United States in this conflict, because I modeled for 20 years, as under 5%. By Israel at about 15%. So just to tell you where this has been. I've now essentially been doubling those over time because the nature of the players. So the modeling is agnostic to the decision makers, right? Over time, because you have different presidents come in. But what we've already seen is that President Trump is already inordinately looking into nuclear weapons.

• 2:53:48Speaker 01

  A dolphin, which is a nuclear arms carrying submarine by Israel, Israel moved it into the Red Sea within firing range of Tehran. Now, these are not by themselves dispositive. These are just movements. So I understand that. But nonetheless, these are encouraging Iran to move forward to do nuclear tests. So as you look at, I'm not saying, so as you just look at strategic interaction. So that's what a model is. It's not just one player, it's strategic interaction. The reason I've upped my percentages is because I've seen actions by Israel and the United States

• 2:54:29Speaker 01

  that I believe are increasing Iran's incentives to do nuclear tests. And that once Iran would actually literally prepare to do nuclear tests, if we see those coming, that is another interaction. So that's my dynamic that I'm concerned about. But it's not at the level of 50, 70%.

• 2:54:50Speaker 02

  Right now, Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon because of a fatwa in place. So for the fatwa to be rescinded, the Supreme Leader would need to organize a council and they would need to...

• 2:55:00Chris Williamson?

  There's no chance that they could subvert the religious doctrine?

• 2:55:03Speaker 02

  It's a theocracy. It's like saying, like, you know, let's ignore the First Amendment of the Constitution.

• 2:55:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that could be arranged pretty quickly.

• 2:55:10Speaker 02

  Well...

• 2:55:11Speaker 01

  And they're about to withdraw from the NPT possibly. So they're already talking about...

• 2:55:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:55:15Speaker 01

  So these are these under the hood actions.

• 2:55:18Speaker 02

  They first need to revoke that fatwa, okay? According to their system. So Iran would only develop a nuclear weapon if Israel and the United States were to attack first. Right? But if you're Iran, oh, sorry, if you're Israel and the United States, you use a tactical nuclear weapon, say maybe on Pickaxe Mountain, right?

• 2:55:35Speaker 03

  Building deliverable nuclear weapon is much more complex than testing one. You have to have all sorts of elements come together. It would take time and there's more.

• 2:55:48Speaker 01

  Well, that's true for hydrogen generation two weapons, but not atomic weapons, Fat Man and Little Boy. So Fat Man and Little Boy are undergraduate... Well, no, Fat Man and Little Boy are delivered on, was delivered on aircraft. This was not a, put into a, the second generation was miniaturized to put into the missile. But once we look...

• 2:56:09Speaker 03

  I simply am saying that developing a nuclear weapon and testing it and making sure it works takes a bit of time.

• 2:56:17Speaker 01

  Well, if North Korea, the 212th poorest country on the planet, can do 60, pretty sure this country can conquer this problem.

• 2:56:26Speaker 03

  Over a period of time, yes.

• 2:56:28Speaker 01

  Well, just pointing out, it's, you're raising it to the bar. It must be miniaturized and look like our... If, once we go back to World War II level nuclear weapons, which just have to keep in mind, killed well over 100,000 people in those two explosions.

• 2:56:44Speaker 03

  The North Korean nuclear...

• 2:56:45Speaker 01

  Plenty of problems.

• 2:56:46Speaker 03

  Nuclear program in North Korea lasted many years.

• 2:56:49Speaker 01

  Well, that's because they went too miniaturized. I'm just pointing out that Iran may go much more quickly to atomic weapons.

• 2:56:55Speaker 03

  The thing I want to do is, I see the risk of nuclear war, even with Iraq, down the road with plenty of time to do it. Just, we're talking about things you're afraid of.

• 2:57:07Speaker 01

  If Iran tests two nuclear devices, I think that the odds that we're going to look at those two nuclear tests, let's say it's in October surprise.

• 2:57:15Speaker 03

  I totally...

• 2:57:15Speaker 01

  If they test two nuclear weapons in October, are you telling me, George? We're going to look at those two nuclear tests and say, don't worry, folks. It's going to be years before they could hit New York.

• 2:57:26Speaker 03

  If they test two nuclear weapons in October.

• 2:57:28Speaker 01

  Two nuclear devices.

• 2:57:29Speaker 03

  You're absolutely right. I am saying, however, knowing something about developing nuclear weapons, that first test will probably fail and so on and so forth. There is time, is all I'm saying. Okay? Nothing more than that.

• 2:57:45Chris Williamson?

  What should people be paying the most attention to? Let's say the next two years, something like that. People that are listening, what are the warning signs? Nuclear tests coming out of Iran, one of those. What are the little hurdles in terms of timing? You mentioned November, you also mentioned January.

• 2:58:04Speaker 01

  What are the bad signs or some of the good signs?

• 2:58:06Chris Williamson?

  Just what should people be paying attention to? If this is the sort of change which occurs, what would be the big inflection points that you guys are paying attention to over the next two years or so?

• 2:58:16Speaker 01

  Well, the number one inflection point I'm tracking, and again, building on what I just told you about, January, is whether we will see the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress and seated peacefully. Seated peacefully. So we need to understand that what we saw in November 2020 was an election did not go President Trump's way. Now, we have not seen President Trump as president have that happen again. He is about to be president. And we're going to see in November 2026, will an election not go President Trump's way? And if it doesn't go President Trump's way, is he going to do anything to disturb the process of it going?

• 2:59:00Speaker 01

  And that will go on for months because the election is November 3rd. Seeding the Congress is January 3rd. If that's what I'm really focused on, because if that goes south, all of these issues are going to get much, much, much worse.

• 2:59:12Speaker 03

  I see the positive one evolving is the US-China economic entente and reducing tensions within them. If those two countries get together, the global system changes, possibly with proper presidents, stabilizes in a different form. So I'm looking at that as the most critical thing coming.

• 2:59:38Speaker 02

  My question is, will the United States target critical civil infrastructure in Iran next one or two months? If Iran starts, sorry, if the United States starts targeting power plants or these escalation plants en masse, this war is now out of control. We are now beyond the escalation trap. It's complete madness.

• 2:59:58Chris Williamson?

  Even if it's done remotely, it doesn't need to be boots on the ground? It doesn't need to be nukes?

• 3:00:02Speaker 02

  If the United States targets Iranian power plants, Iran will target...

• 3:00:07Chris Williamson?

  In any way?

• 3:00:07Speaker 02

  In any way. Iran will target all of the Middle East energy infrastructure, the pipelines, the energy fields. It's easy to do with drones.

• 3:00:16Speaker 01

  I agree with this. I just put the internal problem a little bit higher. But I agree with his assessment that, and this is part of my nightmare scenario.

• 3:00:24Chris Williamson?

  And it's not like these two things are existing separately.

• 3:00:26Speaker 01

  They actually go together. That's what I'm trying to say. These things actually go together. And then I gave this presentation to my Substack about the four steps that would be the nightmare scenario, just in the Iran war. And this is, this is the critical step. Because once you hit, and I, when I taught for the US Air Force in the 1990s, targeting electric power plants was one of the critical things we studied for months and months. We fortunately did it in the unclassified world so that I was, I'm able to talk about this. We brought in people that ran the power plants, the engineers that built them. So I have a fair idea of the different places you would target the plants, what the consequences are.

• 3:01:06Speaker 01

  And there's a great paper that if people are listening, by Thomas Griffith, called "Targeting Electric Power." He was a military officer when he wrote this paper. It is the best paper on the consequences of targeting military power. And on my Substack, I wrote a lengthy piece, what targeting Tehran would really mean for the people of Tehran. When you take out the electric power in Tehran for a month. And I walked through it, but...

• 3:01:38Chris Williamson?

  Not good, I imagine.

• 3:01:39Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. You would, it's, oh, yeah. It's much, because all of the, so much of the food, 25% of the food in Tehran is under refrigeration. And that includes all the supermarkets, all, there's so much that is. And then you really start to run out of the ability to pump water. So things like water pumping stations in the Middle East where you depend on water. So there's, there's so much of detail underneath this summary of droughts, starvation, massive accusations of the city. But where do these 10 million people go? It's not like they just run to some other place and turn on the faucet.

• 3:02:22Speaker 01

  So this is the, the targeting of electric power is much worse than most people...

• 3:02:28Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh. It's actually worse than a nuclear option. To do that would be worse than using a tactical nuke on Pickaxe Mountain.

• 3:02:35Chris Williamson?

  In terms of destruction, quality of life change?

• 3:02:38Speaker 02

  In terms of the escalation of death.

• 3:02:41Speaker 01

  Oh, the escalation ladder, civilian death.

• 3:02:43Chris Williamson?

  No way. So if you hit, you're saying if you hit power plants with any kind of missile, that's more expeditious than...

• 3:02:51Speaker 01

  Well, just to be super clear, there's two aim points on the electric power. And this is a target set that we've, the American Air Force has hit many times.

• 3:03:00Chris Williamson?

  You designed it, yeah.

• 3:03:01Speaker 01

  So, well, in order to understand why not to do it, to be, and by the way, from the moment of Tom Griffith's paper, and we did this in the mid 90s until right now, we've not targeted electric power. So that paper for 20 years has been the

• 3:03:19Chris Williamson?

  It was a warning.

• 3:03:20Speaker 01

  To of the warning to all the generals and CENTCOM, this is what it means to target electric power. And it shows, and so what you are, what you are seeing in the plant itself. So if we could imagine, I don't see a good thing to use as a plant, but you can hit the, the cables that connect the plant to the grid, the electric power grid. That's like blowing a fuse in your home. That knocks it out for like

• 3:03:46Chris Williamson?

  Pretty easy to fix.

• 3:03:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, about a week. Okay, maybe two at most, but maybe it was really about four or five days. But if you hit the halls, the actual generating halls, those are each special made. They're gigantic. They're much bigger than this whole building. And it takes six months to even design them and produce them, much less bring them back in. So once you go after the halls, so when President Trump, his rhetoric here is worrisome because he's talking about, when he's talking about these massive consequences, this would be fit, this would fit with the description of going after the halls. And you're not bringing this back with the Red Cross.

• 3:04:28Speaker 01

  And you're not going to come in and you're not going to support this with a giant Berlin airlift of massive water to all these people. This is, this is going to, this would be much more horrendous. And if you take out Tehran, that's 10 million people. It wouldn't be long before you took out another like 10 different nodes. And the entire 70% of the population would be without electric power. It's a, it's a much bigger problem than people realize.

• 3:04:59Chris Williamson?

  That is scary. That is terrifying. Gentlemen, I appreciate you all. This is, I don't know whether I'm reassured, but I'm definitely more educated, which is nice. Where should people go to check out everything that you've got going on?

• 3:05:10Speaker 02

  I'm on YouTube and Substack, Predictive History.

• 3:05:13Speaker 01

  I'm on Substack here, Escalation Trap, Professor Pape. And starting tomorrow, a brand new YouTube channel that's coming tomorrow afternoon. Pape on the Politics of Force. So stay tuned.

• 3:05:26Chris Williamson?

  And a new book.

• 3:05:26Speaker 01

  And, and a new book coming, Our Own Worst Enemies, America in the Age of Violent Populism. And my nightmare scenario was always that we'd have an election that's discontentious with an international crisis, and they're both happening.

• 3:05:43Chris Williamson?

  Heck, yeah.

• 3:05:44Speaker 03

  And for me, geopolitcalfutures.com is which could visit. And I'm of the opinion humanity will survive again. Extremely probable, it might seem.

• 3:05:57Chris Williamson?

  Beautiful. Gentlemen, I appreciate you all. Thank you very much.

• 3:05:59Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:06:00Chris Williamson?

  Goodbye, my beauties.

• 3:06:01Speaker 02

  Thanks. That's great. Thanks so much.

• 3:06:02Speaker 01

  George, George. Thank you very much. That was awesome. That was awesome.