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You've been running simulations on a war with Iran.

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Yep, every strategy for 20 years, and it's laying out right now,

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so I can tell you that we are losing control of the situation.

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Like, we don't know where that nuclear material is,

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but they have the material for 16 nuclear buttons.

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And we've given them every incentive to develop them.

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Professor Robert Pape might be the single most important,

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credible person we all need to listen to right now.

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The Supreme Leader that we took out was against nuclear weapons.

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The new Supreme Leader, and he's way more aggressive.

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He's advised two decades of presidents in the White House.

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President Trump is really stuck, but he thrives in chaos.

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And spent 30 years building the curriculum

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that trains the air force for the exact type of war that's taking place now in Iran.

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And one of the most mind-blowing things I've learned is that there are three stages

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to this conflict.

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Unfortunately, Professor Robert Pape, who has two decades of been correct with his predictions,

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gives us 75% chance that Trump is about to escalate to stage three.

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In this episode, we're going to explain exactly what this means.

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Just give me 30 seconds of your time.

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Two things I wanted to say.

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The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show.

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Week after week means the world to all of us,

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and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.

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But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.

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And if you enjoy what we do here,

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I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.

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We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to,

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and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.

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Thank you.

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Professor Robert Payne.

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What the hell is going on in the world?

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Now I should ask first, who are you?

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And what have you spent the last several decades of your life studying and doing?

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And how does that relate to what's happening in the world right now?

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We are going through a crisis more and very intense right now,

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but it's a crisis that we have been through before.

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20 years ago with the Iraq War, even before that,

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we saw the bombing of Qaddafi, we saw the reactions there.

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Now I have been studying military strategy,

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air power, international terrorism,

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now terrorism inside the United States,

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and also political violence in the United States.

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It's not related to particular groups.

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So I've been studying political violence for 40 years.

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What is the headline that people need to be aware of?

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When you've looked at 30 years of these types of wars?

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That bombs don't just hit targets, they change politics.

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What does that mean?

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That means that before the bombs fall,

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and even as the bombs are falling now,

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we tend to focus on the tactical success of bombing.

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We tend to ask, did the bombs hit the targets?

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And it's with the smart bomb age, it's almost mesmerizing.

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They hit the target and destroy the target crater,

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crater dirt, crater concrete, destroy buildings,

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90% of the time.

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The problem is wars are not just about the hardware.

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They're not just about the military operation

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of putting a bomb on a target.

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They're about politics.

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And when the bombs start to fall,

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the politics in both the target, the enemy, change,

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and the politics in the attacker, the initial change.

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And that threshold is the beginning

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of what I'm calling the escalation trap.

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Because you get at stage one, tactical success often,

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what's missing here is the next consideration, which is politics.

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Who, if you advised, and at what level have you advised them on strategy,

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war, et cetera, et cetera?

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So when I finished my PhD, right away,

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we started to fight the first Gulf War,

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which was an all-air power war.

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And I found my work from the 1980s suddenly more relevant than ever.

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I was in the Washington Post, USA Today Frontline designing the stories,

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because we didn't have the talking military heads at the time.

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And then I get a call from the US Air Force.

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And they're asking me to come in and help not just teach,

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but to build the curriculum.

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Then what happens as time goes on,

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I end up advising every White House from 2001 to 2024,

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including the first Trump White House.

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I also heard that you've been running simulations on a war with Iran.

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Yep, the last class of every strategy for 20 years.

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In fact, we did it just last May just before we started the bombing.

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And 90 minutes.

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The class goes a whole quarter strategy in all kinds of different ways.

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We ended with the bombing of Iran.

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And what did that mean?

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That meant we took out the whole tarot.

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We have the target set laid out.

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We have the attack plans.

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We really go through the bombing of Natanz for Doh,

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Estefan.

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There's a number of these facilities and so forth.

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And then we look at what's going to happen.

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And what you see right away is 90 plus percent.

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Those B2s are going to destroy those targets.

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B2s being the aircraft.

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The stealthy aircraft that can penetrate the airspace,

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very small risk of loss.

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And then you see, but we don't know where the nuclear material is.

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The whole point of this is not to destroy a building.

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It's to get at the 5%, 20%, 60% enriched uranium that's the material for bombs.

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And last May, it was very clear.

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They had the material for 16 bombs.

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Now, not 16 nuclear bombs.

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16 nuclear bombs.

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Yes, nuclear bombs, not to produce them all in a single week,

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but over a period of months.

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And then after we did that simulation,

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we didn't know where a single ounce was.

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And we weren't going to know for months after.

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So at the end of every, I make some predictions, I say, what's going to happen?

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What's going to happen is after about a year,

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we are going to panic because that material could be dispersed anywhere in Iran,

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anywhere in that country.

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And that country, look how big that is compared to the United States,

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could be dispersed anywhere now.

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And how many of those are actually developing toward a bomb?

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We will not know.

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So what will we do?

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Regime change.

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From all of your years, I mean, 31 years old, you start teaching about air power and war in

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this regard. And you are 65 now.

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Yeah.

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What is there from everything you know, 30 plus years studying this stuff,

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around running simulations on Iran, advising the White House, being a master,

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and probably arguably the most informed person in the United States right now,

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about air attacks like the one the US performing on Iran.

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What is the headline that you're trying to send to the world at this moment in time?

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Like, what is it we're missing?

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Because we're seeing Trump come out and Trump say,

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it's going well, everything's amazing.

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We've taken out all that guys.

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What is, what are we missing?

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We're missing that we're stuck in a trap of our own making.

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I'll explain what that trap is.

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But the key consequence of the trap is we're losing control.

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We are losing control of the situation.

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And what you were seeing with President Trump is he's trying to

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regain control.

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Now, the problem is that starting not just a week of Saturday,

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but starting back in June, when we took out Nathans 4do,

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we started to lose control.

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And what are we losing control of knowing where that nuclear material is?

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And we now have civilian satellites.

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And you can see them moving things.

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What would they be moving around the nuclear areas?

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I wonder.

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You think they're moving the, what are they moving here?

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It's most likely going to be that nuclear material.

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Because they're planned, you can see they have prepared for this war

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just as we have, except they've been preparing for how to be resilient.

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How to now lash back in increasingly aggressive ways.

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They are winning the escalation part of the war.

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And that's not an accident.

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This you can see coming in stages.

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For anyone that doesn't know, we've got leaders that have different levels of

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sort of information and knowledge here.

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I'm going to try and summarize this and butcher it in the most

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indelicate way I possibly can.

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So earlier last year, last year, the United States

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suspected that Iran were very close to enriching uranium.

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They're at 60 percent. They're at 60 already.

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If they get to 90 percent, they have a bomb.

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Yes, but possibly even with the 60 percent, Steven,

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it depends on just how good their scientists are and we're not really sure.

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So there's somewhere where at 60 percent, we're already very worried.

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You go to 90, it's a gimmie.

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And then the United States dropped these big bunker buster bombs.

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They flew those B2 airplanes in, dropped these bombs,

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smashing up the site, and then it felt like it was over.

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And then the United States went into negotiations with Iran to try and get some kind of deal done.

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To get the material we didn't get.

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Oh, you see why are we even talking to them?

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If this has really obliterated the program, why are we bothering to talk to them?

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What exactly are we talking about here?

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Do you notice the inconsistency here?

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So when you say we thought it was over, that's the public.

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Now the public need to understand.

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They're very busy people.

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They're deploying for the price of eggs.

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Okay, so they're not supposed to be able to be up on us.

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It's a good point.

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I've never thought about.

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Yeah, why would we be talking to them?

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Why are we talking to them?

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You see, so right from the get-go.

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And by the way, all of the Israelis, we have a thing called the Defense Intelligence Agency.

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Their reports that were done after the bombing were leaked.

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And they all say the same thing, which is we created holes.

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We probably shook these underground chambers.

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We're not sure because we had no eyeballs on that.

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But we have no idea where that enriched uranium is.

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And we have good reason to worry.

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They got them out because we actually have a satellite picture

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that shows two days before we bomb for dough.

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There's a bunch of trucks moving stuff out.

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Gee, what do you think you might move out if America's about to bomb your site?

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Again, I don't think they're moving out the popcorn.

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So, and it's pretty, this material can be moved in what look like large scuba tang.

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They call them scuba tangs.

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But I try to show pictures of this too.

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They're actually like as large as this table.

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So you need basically trucks, trucks like that satellite photography shows they took out.

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So we can't say for sure, but what you see is these are the indications

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that you worry they've dispersed the material even before we hit the site.

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And then we attack.

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Yeah.

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The United States attacks in February, February, 2026, which is...

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Yep, February, 2026, February, 2028.

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We start again.

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This time with regime change.

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Notice we don't go even after the physical, the nuclear material.

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We don't know where it is.

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So for the average person, the average person would think,

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if you take out the supreme leader, then the war is over.

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Joke the bomb on the person and the war is complete.

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Yeah, so let's talk about your Jenga thing here.

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Because what I find, Stephen, so keep in mind,

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I am advising, teaching some of the most brilliant minds in the country.

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Now, a lot of these smart people, though, they don't know that they've been given like one-inch deep

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briefings, maybe even one sentence briefings.

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So their image is often like this and it's wrong.

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This is what they think the regime looks like.

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And they think that because they've been given...

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They basically have been consuming probably for years.

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One or two sentences about the structure.

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They know there's a supreme leader.

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They might know there's nuclear facilities, missiles, command.

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And so it looks like, oh my goodness gracious,

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that if you could just simply take out the right node,

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you would be able to make this whole thing fall down, okay?

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But that's the wrong image, Stephen.

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This is the way smart people think.

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The problem is, this is a false image of most regimes, even the bad ones,

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and certainly the Iranian regime.

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Let me just focus on the Iranian regime.

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The Iranian regime is more like a matrix.

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It's more, it's not brittle the way this is.

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So you can keep trying to pull things out,

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but with a matrix or I think the corporate structures now are built to be adaptive,

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to change because you have so many changes that happen,

249
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the structure needs to adapt to change.

250
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That is basically the structure of revolutionary regimes going back to before World War I.

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Okay, I want to ask a dumb question.

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Yeah. When they took out the supreme leader in Iran, who's going to give out the instructions?

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The adaptive system adapts and fills in the holes.

254
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It fills in the holes usually with what's left.

255
00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:14.400
And in this case, the supreme leader that we took out, this particular hole,

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this was the guy who had two fatwas, they're called, these are religious edicts.

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It's like a people, he edict against nuclear weapons.

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It's a religious, he's the leader of essentially the religion, a little bit like the Shia Pope.

259
00:14:31.680 --> 00:14:38.240
He is actually issuing religious doctrine, and that's called a fatwa.

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And as a religious doctrine, he issued two that said,

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Iran should not have nuclear weapons.

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The guy we killed was one of the guardrails against nuclear weapons.

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How does that mean he was developing them?

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00:14:52.960 --> 00:14:56.800
No, no, he's developing the enrichment material.

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They hadn't been fashioned yet that we know of as nuclear weapons.

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So we're worried about, again, this enrichment going from 5% to 20% to 60%.

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But they hadn't actually taken that next step, which is more of an engineering step

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to develop the nuclear weapon.

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Now, we took out the person who, at the very tippy top, was balancing the hawks and doves,

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and he had decided four decades to issue these fatwas.

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He did it not just once, but twice.

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His son, who took over the new supreme leader?

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No fought? Well, yeah, that fought what died with this guy.

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00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:39.360
So will the new leader come in?

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It's not clear he's got the religious authority to do anything like what his father did.

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This is a very different world.

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And he's known to be way more aggressive than his father.

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He's been in charge of the Basi, the police that like to go and kill the protesters.

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He's been the guy who's been very strongly supporting, if not leading, that particular effort.

280
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And last night it was announced that he has been appointed as the new leader.

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He's the new supreme leader.

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Did Trump expect this?

283
00:16:14.240 --> 00:16:19.360
I think that he expected it because he kept trying to talk the Iranians out of it.

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This is what he meant by last week when President Trump was saying that he wanted

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not this guy. He specifically said not the son.

286
00:16:29.920 --> 00:16:33.520
And then he had a problem because people kept pushing him.

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00:16:33.520 --> 00:16:36.960
And they said, okay, well, if you don't like the son, who would you pick?

288
00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:40.960
And he said, well, it is a problem because when we killed the supreme leader,

289
00:16:40.960 --> 00:16:45.840
we killed around the leader 20 or 30 others who we actually thought were better.

290
00:16:45.840 --> 00:16:51.280
So we actually took out the best alternatives when the supreme leader was killed.

291
00:16:51.280 --> 00:16:56.960
And everybody scratching their heads, what are we talking about here?

292
00:16:56.960 --> 00:17:02.080
So we actually helped by killing the competitors to the son.

293
00:17:03.280 --> 00:17:04.960
We made it more likely to the son.

294
00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:08.720
And so what I'm trying to explain, Steven, is this adapts, okay?

295
00:17:08.720 --> 00:17:13.680
So that you're not really taking these pieces out.

296
00:17:13.680 --> 00:17:18.160
You're rearranging them and you are moving up.

297
00:17:18.160 --> 00:17:21.680
In this case, you're moving up the next supreme leader.

298
00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:25.520
Well, there's the supreme leader, but what we're not showing here,

299
00:17:25.520 --> 00:17:28.800
you're seeing the target sets that are being discussed.

300
00:17:28.800 --> 00:17:31.200
You're not seeing the revolutionary guard.

301
00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:32.000
What is that?

302
00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:34.480
That is part of the army.

303
00:17:34.480 --> 00:17:39.200
Iran has a million men in arms, a million.

304
00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:43.360
That's as many as we have in our 300 million people.

305
00:17:43.360 --> 00:17:44.560
They have 92 million.

306
00:17:44.560 --> 00:17:46.000
They have a million in arms.

307
00:17:46.800 --> 00:17:52.480
And about 150 or 200,000 of them are what are called the revolutionary guards.

308
00:17:52.480 --> 00:17:57.600
These are the most aggressive, the most well-trained.

309
00:17:57.600 --> 00:18:00.080
These are the most dedicated to the regime.

310
00:18:00.960 --> 00:18:08.080
The news, the son, who just took over is the prime candidate for that group.

311
00:18:08.080 --> 00:18:14.240
So when we took out a link here, it's not just being replaced by another cog.

312
00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:17.760
It's being replaced by a very aggressive individual

313
00:18:17.760 --> 00:18:22.800
who's backed by some of the most aggressive part of that million man army.

314
00:18:22.800 --> 00:18:25.840
So this is what I was trying to explain in my substacks,

315
00:18:25.840 --> 00:18:30.880
where when you take out the leader, you may kill the leader,

316
00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:35.280
but you get in its place a harder regime, a more resilient regime,

317
00:18:35.280 --> 00:18:39.440
a tougher regime that wants to lash back even more aggressively.

318
00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:40.320
Because you killed dad.

319
00:18:40.880 --> 00:18:45.680
If you killed dad, and also if you don't lash back,

320
00:18:45.680 --> 00:18:49.680
how does the new leader get his credibility with everybody else?

321
00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:53.520
If he's a wimp, why doesn't he get a bullet in the back of the head?

322
00:18:53.520 --> 00:18:56.320
You see, the new, just because he's appointed a new leader,

323
00:18:56.320 --> 00:19:00.400
he's still just like when you're the head of a new company.

324
00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:03.920
Like, let's say you take over a, there's a company that's in shambles

325
00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:07.680
and they get rid of their CEO and they bring you on, okay?

326
00:19:07.680 --> 00:19:09.280
Well, you got to have a plan.

327
00:19:09.280 --> 00:19:13.120
You see, and if you don't have a plan to turn that thing around pretty soon,

328
00:19:13.120 --> 00:19:15.520
you know, Elon must have to have the big plan.

329
00:19:15.520 --> 00:19:17.520
If you don't have that plan, guess what?

330
00:19:17.520 --> 00:19:20.080
You're out. Same here.

331
00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:25.520
So you have incentive structure here for not just replacing,

332
00:19:25.520 --> 00:19:30.480
not just wimpy replacements, certainly not pro-American replacements.

333
00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:36.160
You have incentives for lashing back against the attacker,

334
00:19:36.160 --> 00:19:39.920
which is why when we tried to kill Kadoffi in 1986,

335
00:19:39.920 --> 00:19:44.160
he lashes back and takes out Pan Am Flight 103,

336
00:19:44.160 --> 00:19:48.560
killing 271 civilians, 190 Americans.

337
00:19:48.560 --> 00:19:52.000
When we try to take out the Milosevic regime to degrade it

338
00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:55.920
in March 99, Milosevic lashes back,

339
00:19:55.920 --> 00:19:59.280
sending 30,000 ground forces into cleanse

340
00:19:59.280 --> 00:20:03.760
that is get rid of a million civilians in Kosovo.

341
00:20:04.560 --> 00:20:06.000
This over and over.

342
00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:10.000
I mean, you have written books about suicide terrorism.

343
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:11.200
That's right.

344
00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:14.160
I've got one of them in front of me here called dying to win.

345
00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:15.760
So I mean, you know a lot about this subject.

346
00:20:15.760 --> 00:20:18.160
And this is one of the concerns that actually my fiancee said to me.

347
00:20:18.160 --> 00:20:20.080
She said, I explained to her, I was like, you know,

348
00:20:20.080 --> 00:20:22.240
Iran, they really just have drones at the moment.

349
00:20:22.240 --> 00:20:23.680
So I think that's fine.

350
00:20:23.680 --> 00:20:24.960
And then she posed a question to me.

351
00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:27.520
She was like, yeah, but what about suicide?

352
00:20:27.520 --> 00:20:28.800
Let me just explain.

353
00:20:28.800 --> 00:20:30.320
So here we are.

354
00:20:31.280 --> 00:20:33.280
Here is, of course, Iran.

355
00:20:33.280 --> 00:20:35.360
And imagine it's back in June.

356
00:20:35.360 --> 00:20:37.120
So I'm going to start the story in June.

357
00:20:37.120 --> 00:20:40.480
This is the beginning of the smart bomb, the escalation trap.

358
00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:41.520
Stage one.

359
00:20:41.520 --> 00:20:45.200
We hit for doe, which is right around there.

360
00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:49.040
And then we hit Natanz and some other sites right around here.

361
00:20:49.040 --> 00:20:51.440
And what does Iran do here?

362
00:20:51.440 --> 00:20:52.800
They lash back.

363
00:20:52.800 --> 00:20:56.400
And who were they lashing back against Israel here?

364
00:20:57.200 --> 00:21:00.080
They have their missiles focused on Israel.

365
00:21:00.080 --> 00:21:02.560
They're not really hitting our bases here.

366
00:21:02.560 --> 00:21:03.680
They're hitting Israel.

367
00:21:03.680 --> 00:21:07.920
And they send 3,000 Israelis to the hospital.

368
00:21:07.920 --> 00:21:10.720
The most since the 73 war.

369
00:21:10.720 --> 00:21:12.240
So long time.

370
00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:14.480
That is stage one.

371
00:21:14.480 --> 00:21:15.360
Okay.

372
00:21:15.360 --> 00:21:19.840
Now what happened when in February 28, February 28,

373
00:21:19.840 --> 00:21:23.600
they're lashing back a bit against Israel for sure.

374
00:21:23.600 --> 00:21:25.280
But now they're at stage two.

375
00:21:25.280 --> 00:21:28.240
This is why I published this piece today in foreign affairs

376
00:21:28.400 --> 00:21:30.800
about how Iran's winning the escalation war.

377
00:21:30.800 --> 00:21:33.920
So it just came out just a few hours before we came on.

378
00:21:33.920 --> 00:21:35.680
And what's happening here is called,

379
00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:38.160
I call it horizontal escalation.

380
00:21:38.160 --> 00:21:41.360
Because what they're doing now is they're using drones

381
00:21:41.360 --> 00:21:43.800
mostly a few missiles, but mostly drones.

382
00:21:43.800 --> 00:21:46.320
This was almost all missiles, no drones.

383
00:21:46.320 --> 00:21:48.560
And they're using their drone capacity,

384
00:21:48.560 --> 00:21:50.400
which they have a lot of.

385
00:21:50.400 --> 00:21:51.400
And it's precision.

386
00:21:51.400 --> 00:21:54.440
These drones are like precision guided weapons.

387
00:21:54.440 --> 00:21:56.440
They go right to the target.

388
00:21:56.440 --> 00:22:00.440
And what they're trying to do is break this coalition.

389
00:22:00.440 --> 00:22:02.320
For you and that can't see at the moment.

390
00:22:02.320 --> 00:22:05.240
They counted with horizontal escalation against Saudi Arabia,

391
00:22:05.240 --> 00:22:09.840
the UAE, the coalition that had been formed against them.

392
00:22:09.840 --> 00:22:12.320
They're trying to break the coalition.

393
00:22:12.320 --> 00:22:13.800
You see?

394
00:22:13.800 --> 00:22:15.240
And they may well do that.

395
00:22:15.240 --> 00:22:16.560
Why would they want to break that?

396
00:22:16.560 --> 00:22:17.400
Why?

397
00:22:17.400 --> 00:22:18.400
The friends are escaping to buy it.

398
00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:19.600
The moment I've got friends staying in my house

399
00:22:19.600 --> 00:22:21.120
and keep down because he doesn't want to be here.

400
00:22:21.120 --> 00:22:24.680
Because they want these countries to kick the Americans

401
00:22:24.680 --> 00:22:25.920
out of their country.

402
00:22:26.280 --> 00:22:28.040
Get rid of the embassies.

403
00:22:28.040 --> 00:22:29.600
Get rid of the bases.

404
00:22:29.600 --> 00:22:34.080
If you can, then we don't have the platforms to plaster them.

405
00:22:34.080 --> 00:22:37.520
You see, these are our basically ground-based aircraft carriers.

406
00:22:37.520 --> 00:22:40.520
I thought they were attacking Saudi Arabia, for example,

407
00:22:40.520 --> 00:22:42.240
because that will make Saudi Arabia

408
00:22:42.240 --> 00:22:43.640
call Trump and say, listen, stop.

409
00:22:43.640 --> 00:22:46.200
Please, we're losing our tourism.

410
00:22:46.200 --> 00:22:47.360
We're shutting our airports.

411
00:22:47.360 --> 00:22:52.680
Well, they are threatening the tourism, hitting the economic nodes.

412
00:22:52.680 --> 00:22:55.000
They're hitting hotels.

413
00:22:55.040 --> 00:22:56.880
They're hitting the airports.

414
00:22:56.880 --> 00:23:00.520
What they are trying to do is by threatening tourism,

415
00:23:00.520 --> 00:23:06.520
which varies from 5% to 10% of the GDP of these countries.

416
00:23:06.600 --> 00:23:08.880
This is not trivial amounts here.

417
00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:12.040
They're basically trying to drive wedges

418
00:23:12.040 --> 00:23:15.600
between these countries and America.

419
00:23:15.600 --> 00:23:18.360
And America right now, I don't see any movement

420
00:23:18.360 --> 00:23:19.360
through Congress.

421
00:23:19.360 --> 00:23:22.760
Where is this $100 billion going to the region

422
00:23:22.760 --> 00:23:24.640
to make up for their lost tourism?

423
00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:27.600
I don't remember seeing that bill come through Congress last week.

424
00:23:27.600 --> 00:23:30.600
So I'm just putting a little humorously to point out,

425
00:23:30.600 --> 00:23:33.800
these countries are losing a fair bit right now.

426
00:23:33.800 --> 00:23:36.200
And that tourism may not come back for a while.

427
00:23:36.200 --> 00:23:38.520
I've got friends that have moved.

428
00:23:38.520 --> 00:23:40.120
I've got friends that one of my friends

429
00:23:40.120 --> 00:23:43.600
was thinking about leaving is now in my house in Cape Town,

430
00:23:43.600 --> 00:23:45.120
and he's been there for five years.

431
00:23:45.120 --> 00:23:47.400
He's leaving, and he's going to move to America.

432
00:23:47.400 --> 00:23:49.080
I've got so many friends that have queued here.

433
00:23:49.080 --> 00:23:53.280
And imagine that we have 500,000 American citizens here,

434
00:23:53.280 --> 00:23:56.360
and we have the State Department on CNN.

435
00:23:56.360 --> 00:23:57.480
Call this number.

436
00:23:57.480 --> 00:23:59.240
We'll help you escape.

437
00:23:59.240 --> 00:24:00.520
It's kind of even the media in the UK.

438
00:24:00.520 --> 00:24:02.600
You see it, it's like, it's showing like the BBC

439
00:24:02.600 --> 00:24:04.800
showing like evacuations of UK citizens.

440
00:24:04.800 --> 00:24:06.920
Has that been created in the Apple putting microphones in?

441
00:24:06.920 --> 00:24:09.640
So this is putting a lot of pressure here.

442
00:24:09.640 --> 00:24:13.480
And there's something else that's not widely known,

443
00:24:13.480 --> 00:24:16.720
which is there's a big gap between what the leaders

444
00:24:16.720 --> 00:24:20.200
of the countries want, willing to support the US and Israel

445
00:24:20.200 --> 00:24:22.000
and their publics.

446
00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:25.800
You see this coalition that's been built against Iran here

447
00:24:25.800 --> 00:24:30.240
is not clearly going down well with publics.

448
00:24:30.240 --> 00:24:31.480
These are publics.

449
00:24:31.480 --> 00:24:32.800
They may not like Iran.

450
00:24:32.800 --> 00:24:35.280
They may be Sunni and Iran Shia,

451
00:24:35.280 --> 00:24:38.680
but they don't want to be part of an Israeli expansion plan

452
00:24:38.680 --> 00:24:41.680
where Israel's going to conquer more and more territory

453
00:24:41.680 --> 00:24:42.520
and so forth.

454
00:24:42.520 --> 00:24:47.520
And so this is where the soft underbelly here of this.

455
00:24:47.520 --> 00:24:49.440
This isn't just about the tourism.

456
00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:50.880
That's the short term.

457
00:24:50.880 --> 00:24:56.320
The longer term is bottom up pressure Sadat.

458
00:24:56.320 --> 00:24:59.120
He was a leader of Egypt in the 1970s.

459
00:24:59.120 --> 00:25:01.280
He cut a deal with Israel.

460
00:25:01.280 --> 00:25:05.400
It's called the Camp David Accords piece for land.

461
00:25:05.400 --> 00:25:07.320
There was, but it was very favorable.

462
00:25:07.320 --> 00:25:11.640
Well, after Sadat did that, the president of Egypt in 1981

463
00:25:11.640 --> 00:25:12.800
in a military parade.

464
00:25:12.800 --> 00:25:17.520
His own security guards at the military parade

465
00:25:17.520 --> 00:25:20.360
marched with their guns, came up to his place

466
00:25:20.400 --> 00:25:22.800
and they shot him dead.

467
00:25:22.800 --> 00:25:25.720
So this is the real world here.

468
00:25:25.720 --> 00:25:29.120
So this is very, very dangerous for these leaders.

469
00:25:29.120 --> 00:25:31.280
Now, that's stage two.

470
00:25:31.280 --> 00:25:34.200
Now, what happens if we decide to have

471
00:25:34.200 --> 00:25:38.040
one of these limited ground deployments here?

472
00:25:38.040 --> 00:25:40.680
Because after all, we still don't know where this material is.

473
00:25:40.680 --> 00:25:41.440
What does that mean?

474
00:25:41.440 --> 00:25:42.720
So if anyone that doesn't know anything about the,

475
00:25:42.720 --> 00:25:44.640
what does a ground deployment mean?

476
00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:46.480
Because I saw Trump being asked about this

477
00:25:46.480 --> 00:25:49.240
from the plane yesterday and he didn't seem to deny it was going to happen.

478
00:25:49.240 --> 00:25:53.560
It means you try to control a limited amount of space,

479
00:25:53.560 --> 00:25:57.800
say the space around Fordo, or the nuclear facility

480
00:25:57.800 --> 00:25:59.680
that you bombed in June.

481
00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:02.920
And you would send the, say, 82nd airborne in

482
00:26:02.920 --> 00:26:04.200
to control the space.

483
00:26:04.200 --> 00:26:06.280
Look, I don't know what I need to say, I see.

484
00:26:06.280 --> 00:26:09.920
So 82nd airborne is a division that we have

485
00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:14.920
that's especially equipped to go into hostile area

486
00:26:15.680 --> 00:26:19.640
and land and control, say, airports, control space.

487
00:26:19.640 --> 00:26:22.840
Think about controlling all the size of LAX.

488
00:26:22.840 --> 00:26:24.880
So if you want to control LAX,

489
00:26:24.880 --> 00:26:26.800
you bring in the 82nd airborne.

490
00:26:26.800 --> 00:26:30.160
They will have 5,000 men and women, not just guys now,

491
00:26:30.160 --> 00:26:33.920
and they will come in and they will control that space LAX.

492
00:26:33.920 --> 00:26:38.200
But they will also be doing this probably not for a day,

493
00:26:38.200 --> 00:26:39.600
not for even a week.

494
00:26:39.600 --> 00:26:41.720
They're going to have to spend weeks and weeks

495
00:26:41.760 --> 00:26:44.520
to search for that material,

496
00:26:44.520 --> 00:26:46.200
because we don't know where it is.

497
00:26:46.200 --> 00:26:48.440
And it's all deeply buried.

498
00:26:48.440 --> 00:26:50.200
And a lot of the stuff has been,

499
00:26:50.200 --> 00:26:52.720
the entrances have been blown up.

500
00:26:52.720 --> 00:26:56.440
So this means long-term presence there.

501
00:26:56.440 --> 00:26:58.560
You might also take some of the oil fields

502
00:26:58.560 --> 00:27:03.560
to cut off some of the money here for the regime.

503
00:27:04.320 --> 00:27:06.680
That is where that book comes in.

504
00:27:06.680 --> 00:27:08.720
Do you think that's likely that America

505
00:27:08.720 --> 00:27:10.080
will put boots on the ground?

506
00:27:10.080 --> 00:27:12.480
American soldiers in Iran?

507
00:27:12.480 --> 00:27:15.560
I think it's at least 50, 50, if not immediately.

508
00:27:15.560 --> 00:27:20.240
So people keep expecting the escalation to be continuous.

509
00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:22.760
And then when there's a pause,

510
00:27:22.760 --> 00:27:25.280
as there was between June and February,

511
00:27:25.280 --> 00:27:26.320
they think, oh, it's over.

512
00:27:26.320 --> 00:27:28.360
I'm going to go now worry about something else.

513
00:27:28.360 --> 00:27:30.560
And they're believing there's plenty else to worry about.

514
00:27:30.560 --> 00:27:34.160
So we got Minneapolis, we got plenty to worry about here,

515
00:27:34.160 --> 00:27:35.640
even with violence.

516
00:27:35.640 --> 00:27:38.840
But that's not how escalation operates.

517
00:27:38.840 --> 00:27:43.000
Escalation can have a ratchet effect

518
00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:46.360
that has, that's spaced out by months

519
00:27:46.360 --> 00:27:48.840
of what seems like peace.

520
00:27:48.840 --> 00:27:51.360
Only to come right back,

521
00:27:51.360 --> 00:27:54.600
and you're stuck in that escalation momentum.

522
00:27:54.600 --> 00:27:55.600
Which is what we've seen.

523
00:27:55.600 --> 00:27:57.280
Which is exactly what we've seen.

524
00:27:57.280 --> 00:27:59.600
And for the reason I'm telling you,

525
00:27:59.600 --> 00:28:03.240
we don't know where that nuclear material is.

526
00:28:03.240 --> 00:28:07.040
That has been the $64,000 weakness

527
00:28:07.080 --> 00:28:11.400
in this entire idea of using air power,

528
00:28:11.400 --> 00:28:15.360
not just in the last 10 days, going back to June.

529
00:28:15.360 --> 00:28:17.360
It's not just even about the regime change.

530
00:28:17.360 --> 00:28:19.960
It's about how are you going to get

531
00:28:19.960 --> 00:28:21.800
that nuclear material out?

532
00:28:21.800 --> 00:28:24.840
We had a deal, this deal with Obama,

533
00:28:24.840 --> 00:28:27.960
Trump did not like it, but with that deal,

534
00:28:27.960 --> 00:28:32.480
that held and Iran took out almost all.

535
00:28:32.480 --> 00:28:34.360
Virtually just only a tiny bit was left.

536
00:28:34.480 --> 00:28:37.520
Not enough for a bomb, all out of the country.

537
00:28:37.520 --> 00:28:39.640
And we watched it, we monitored it,

538
00:28:39.640 --> 00:28:43.280
we had 24-7 cameras to monitor this.

539
00:28:43.280 --> 00:28:46.880
We had human onsite inspections to monitor this.

540
00:28:46.880 --> 00:28:49.800
2018, Trump just ripped it up,

541
00:28:49.800 --> 00:28:52.520
walked away unilaterally, and from that point on,

542
00:28:52.520 --> 00:28:55.120
it's been peddled to the metal by Iran

543
00:28:55.120 --> 00:28:57.640
in upgrading that enriched uranium.

544
00:28:57.640 --> 00:28:59.840
And that's how you got to that material

545
00:28:59.840 --> 00:29:02.080
that would be enough for the 16 bombs.

546
00:29:02.080 --> 00:29:04.840
And right now, we don't know where that is.

547
00:29:04.840 --> 00:29:09.680
So, stage one is, okay, stage one,

548
00:29:09.680 --> 00:29:12.360
you are beginning the escalation trap.

549
00:29:12.360 --> 00:29:14.200
In this case, it's a smart bomb trap,

550
00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:16.440
but it, because it's with smart bombs,

551
00:29:16.440 --> 00:29:20.880
where you have tactical success near perfect.

552
00:29:20.880 --> 00:29:24.240
Call it 100%, because it really is.

553
00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:27.960
But that doesn't mean you have strategic success.

554
00:29:27.960 --> 00:29:32.920
Tactical success plus strategic failure.

555
00:29:32.920 --> 00:29:37.040
Then that strategic failure weighs on you over time

556
00:29:37.040 --> 00:29:38.800
because the enemy still got the thing

557
00:29:38.800 --> 00:29:40.880
that you wanted to get in the first place.

558
00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:44.360
Now you do stage two, which is regime change,

559
00:29:44.360 --> 00:29:47.280
because after all, you've already hit the targets.

560
00:29:47.280 --> 00:29:49.120
You can make the rubble bounce,

561
00:29:49.120 --> 00:29:52.360
but that's why we didn't bomb them in the past 10 days.

562
00:29:52.360 --> 00:29:55.120
We might go back and bomb for no some more, okay?

563
00:29:55.120 --> 00:29:56.520
But we already bombed it.

564
00:29:56.560 --> 00:29:58.800
So, there's more we watch in the bubble.

565
00:29:58.800 --> 00:30:01.480
But now we're at stage two, because what are your options?

566
00:30:01.480 --> 00:30:04.560
The only other option is, well, let me get rid of the regime

567
00:30:04.560 --> 00:30:07.520
because then the regime, I will control,

568
00:30:07.520 --> 00:30:11.240
and the next regime will just give us the material.

569
00:30:11.240 --> 00:30:13.040
That's not working now.

570
00:30:13.040 --> 00:30:15.200
And you hear today, Trump is dancing,

571
00:30:15.200 --> 00:30:17.200
trying to figure out what to say.

572
00:30:17.200 --> 00:30:19.640
He doesn't want to say the war's over, okay?

573
00:30:19.640 --> 00:30:21.520
He doesn't want to say the war's going on,

574
00:30:21.520 --> 00:30:23.640
but the bottom line is, we don't even,

575
00:30:23.640 --> 00:30:27.080
he won't even be clear about why we're fighting the war anymore.

576
00:30:27.080 --> 00:30:28.840
And I'm telling you, there's a real problem.

577
00:30:28.840 --> 00:30:31.360
The nuclear material is still there,

578
00:30:31.360 --> 00:30:35.720
and it can still be fashioned into those 16 bombs over time.

579
00:30:35.720 --> 00:30:39.720
So this is where then you get this horizontal escalation,

580
00:30:39.720 --> 00:30:42.200
where now they've really, really working on this,

581
00:30:42.200 --> 00:30:43.680
because now it's a long war.

582
00:30:43.680 --> 00:30:45.160
They start talking to their neighbors

583
00:30:45.160 --> 00:30:46.960
and try to make it out.

584
00:30:46.960 --> 00:30:48.840
The consequences go on for months.

585
00:30:48.840 --> 00:30:52.240
So just imagine, when are your friends exactly gonna move back?

586
00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:53.640
So let's say the war's over tomorrow.

587
00:30:53.640 --> 00:30:55.120
Are they moving back tomorrow?

588
00:30:55.120 --> 00:30:57.200
And when was the last time,

589
00:30:57.200 --> 00:30:59.600
have you started to plan for your next vacation in Dubai?

590
00:30:59.600 --> 00:31:00.600
I've been to Dubai.

591
00:31:00.600 --> 00:31:02.520
I was planning speaking there in a month's time,

592
00:31:02.520 --> 00:31:04.000
but it's been canceled already.

593
00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:05.240
Yeah, just start to think about that.

594
00:31:05.240 --> 00:31:07.480
And you know, minor thing like a drone attack

595
00:31:07.480 --> 00:31:08.720
could suddenly come out of nowhere.

596
00:31:08.720 --> 00:31:10.240
You know, you're not even, you think it's,

597
00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:13.000
I'm just trying to point out that this is the world now

598
00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:16.120
that a lot of people, this was a luxury market.

599
00:31:16.120 --> 00:31:19.160
This was the playground of the rich and famous here.

600
00:31:19.160 --> 00:31:21.280
This is really now changing.

601
00:31:21.280 --> 00:31:23.600
And it may come back a year or two from now,

602
00:31:23.600 --> 00:31:26.080
but it took two years for air travel

603
00:31:26.080 --> 00:31:27.600
to come back after 9.11.

604
00:31:27.600 --> 00:31:29.080
Just think about that.

605
00:31:29.080 --> 00:31:31.320
Just now, we haven't gotten to stage three yet,

606
00:31:31.320 --> 00:31:33.480
which gets to your girlfriend's point.

607
00:31:33.480 --> 00:31:35.200
How do we move from stage two to stage three?

608
00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:36.800
Oh, well, because you still don't know

609
00:31:36.800 --> 00:31:39.680
where the nuclear material is.

610
00:31:39.680 --> 00:31:42.280
And we don't have to move to stage

611
00:31:42.280 --> 00:31:45.200
beyond to stage three this week.

612
00:31:45.200 --> 00:31:48.680
We could do it a month from now, six months from now.

613
00:31:48.680 --> 00:31:51.440
The problem is we've now put in place

614
00:31:51.440 --> 00:31:55.280
a much more aggressive leadership, much more aggressive regime.

615
00:31:55.280 --> 00:31:58.560
We've taken away some of the, what may have been guardrails.

616
00:31:58.560 --> 00:32:00.680
We can't say for sure for the nuclear weapon.

617
00:32:00.680 --> 00:32:03.320
This new regime, much more likely.

618
00:32:03.320 --> 00:32:05.600
And we've given them every incentive

619
00:32:05.600 --> 00:32:07.400
to develop the nuclear bomb.

620
00:32:07.400 --> 00:32:09.400
We're killing them.

621
00:32:09.400 --> 00:32:12.240
So what exactly is their incentive?

622
00:32:12.240 --> 00:32:16.440
Their best way to survive is to have a nuclear weapon.

623
00:32:16.440 --> 00:32:17.880
And you'll say, well, we're gonna kill them.

624
00:32:17.880 --> 00:32:19.800
Well, we're already killing them.

625
00:32:19.800 --> 00:32:22.240
So we've taken away their incentive

626
00:32:22.240 --> 00:32:24.200
not to have a nuclear weapon.

627
00:32:24.200 --> 00:32:29.040
So we will start to worry as each week goes by.

628
00:32:29.040 --> 00:32:31.160
Not because we have great intel,

629
00:32:31.160 --> 00:32:34.640
not because our human, it's because of the opposite.

630
00:32:34.640 --> 00:32:37.520
We don't have the exquisite intelligence

631
00:32:37.520 --> 00:32:39.440
we had with the Obama deal to know

632
00:32:39.440 --> 00:32:41.480
we had frozen the program.

633
00:32:41.480 --> 00:32:45.080
Now that we have Swiss cheese at best,

634
00:32:45.080 --> 00:32:48.440
and what we will see in the holes of the Swiss cheese

635
00:32:48.440 --> 00:32:51.200
are indications of nuclear development.

636
00:32:51.200 --> 00:32:52.720
And that will make us worry

637
00:32:52.720 --> 00:32:55.280
because what happens with the nuclear weapon

638
00:32:55.280 --> 00:32:56.920
is it gonna go to Hezbollah

639
00:32:56.920 --> 00:33:01.080
and it's Hezbollah gonna help put it in a Haifa?

640
00:33:01.080 --> 00:33:03.080
What's gonna happen with these,

641
00:33:03.080 --> 00:33:04.960
are they gonna give it to the Houthis?

642
00:33:04.960 --> 00:33:08.280
So these are the kind of worries we will have

643
00:33:08.280 --> 00:33:12.080
that will push us to the ground options.

644
00:33:12.080 --> 00:33:16.080
And that is with stage three,

645
00:33:17.920 --> 00:33:21.240
the retaliation approaches the homeland.

646
00:33:21.240 --> 00:33:23.000
That is not realistic.

647
00:33:23.000 --> 00:33:26.920
If ISIS with its 30 to 40,000 members,

648
00:33:26.920 --> 00:33:28.200
ISIS was not a state.

649
00:33:28.200 --> 00:33:31.840
Iran is an actual state with 92 million people.

650
00:33:31.840 --> 00:33:35.800
So if ISIS confirm that command directed,

651
00:33:35.800 --> 00:33:39.280
inspired suicide attacks and other attacks

652
00:33:39.280 --> 00:33:41.960
in San Bernardino just to kind of bring it

653
00:33:41.960 --> 00:33:43.640
a little bit closer to home here

654
00:33:43.640 --> 00:33:44.960
across the United States.

655
00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:47.480
Paris, remember the big Paris attack?

656
00:33:47.480 --> 00:33:49.720
So why exactly is Iran not a,

657
00:33:49.720 --> 00:33:52.920
I mean ISIS was a lot weaker than Iran.

658
00:33:52.920 --> 00:33:55.440
Do you think it Iran at the moment,

659
00:33:55.440 --> 00:33:56.440
they're working on that?

660
00:33:56.440 --> 00:33:58.080
They're working on a terrorist attack?

661
00:33:58.080 --> 00:34:01.720
Well, I don't, I think that my work tells me

662
00:34:01.720 --> 00:34:04.040
that it's most likely to come

663
00:34:04.040 --> 00:34:06.800
with the presence of the ground forces by us.

664
00:34:06.800 --> 00:34:09.320
It doesn't mean it's a necessary condition,

665
00:34:09.320 --> 00:34:11.160
but it's just most likely.

666
00:34:11.160 --> 00:34:15.480
Russia, 96, with our help, we played a trick on them,

667
00:34:15.480 --> 00:34:17.640
assassinated the Chechen leader,

668
00:34:17.640 --> 00:34:22.120
it's a leader of its Republican in Russia called Chechnya,

669
00:34:22.120 --> 00:34:24.360
to die of only a million people.

670
00:34:24.360 --> 00:34:27.680
And Russia killed the guy.

671
00:34:27.680 --> 00:34:29.080
And we actually have pictures of him

672
00:34:29.080 --> 00:34:31.200
seeing the missile hitting him

673
00:34:31.200 --> 00:34:34.640
because we can put the cameras right in the nose count.

674
00:34:34.640 --> 00:34:36.520
Then the new guy took over.

675
00:34:36.520 --> 00:34:38.280
His name was Basiaf.

676
00:34:38.280 --> 00:34:41.120
And he launched within three months,

677
00:34:41.120 --> 00:34:44.560
not the next week, Operation G-Hod.

678
00:34:44.560 --> 00:34:49.560
And his Operation G-Hod was much more vicious tactics.

679
00:34:50.440 --> 00:34:54.480
Kicked the Russian forces, Russia is a big country.

680
00:34:54.480 --> 00:34:56.680
You know, almost 200 million people

681
00:34:56.680 --> 00:34:59.280
compared to this little province of a million.

682
00:34:59.280 --> 00:35:01.880
Kicked the Russians out after three months.

683
00:35:01.880 --> 00:35:04.720
Launches a waves of suicide attacks,

684
00:35:04.720 --> 00:35:07.440
massive kidnappings here.

685
00:35:07.440 --> 00:35:10.920
This really went on for years and years.

686
00:35:10.920 --> 00:35:13.120
So when you say, are they planning it?

687
00:35:13.120 --> 00:35:15.320
I don't think it's quite right, Stephen.

688
00:35:15.320 --> 00:35:17.720
It's not like they have the detailed plan

689
00:35:17.720 --> 00:35:19.520
they're about to execute.

690
00:35:19.520 --> 00:35:23.880
They have the next wave of possibilities,

691
00:35:23.880 --> 00:35:27.040
which would come, I think, most likely with stage two.

692
00:35:27.040 --> 00:35:27.960
So, stage three.

693
00:35:27.960 --> 00:35:31.360
So as this is expanding, as the war expands,

694
00:35:31.360 --> 00:35:32.720
we'll go global.

695
00:35:32.720 --> 00:35:34.960
Really, you are already seeing it global

696
00:35:34.960 --> 00:35:37.160
with the supply chain and you're seeing it with the oil.

697
00:35:37.160 --> 00:35:38.920
So that's already happening.

698
00:35:38.920 --> 00:35:43.120
So what Iran said today, the response

699
00:35:43.120 --> 00:35:44.760
to Trump's press conference today,

700
00:35:44.760 --> 00:35:47.560
they just literally happened before we came on,

701
00:35:47.560 --> 00:35:50.560
is, okay, we will allow Gulf states,

702
00:35:50.560 --> 00:35:52.600
your oil tankers to come through

703
00:35:52.600 --> 00:35:54.760
if you kick the Americans out.

704
00:35:54.760 --> 00:35:58.040
So kick the Americans out and we'll let you pass.

705
00:35:58.040 --> 00:35:58.880
If you don't.

706
00:35:58.880 --> 00:36:00.720
If you don't, we got drones.

707
00:36:00.760 --> 00:36:02.840
So they didn't put that in there, but everybody knows.

708
00:36:02.840 --> 00:36:03.680
They got drones.

709
00:36:03.680 --> 00:36:06.720
And again, if you were explaining this to a 16-year-old,

710
00:36:06.720 --> 00:36:08.360
just to keep it super simple,

711
00:36:08.360 --> 00:36:11.640
there's this passageway across the water

712
00:36:11.640 --> 00:36:13.760
where a lot of the oil tankers go.

713
00:36:13.760 --> 00:36:15.320
Yep, it's straight of Hormuz.

714
00:36:15.320 --> 00:36:16.160
Hormuz?

715
00:36:16.160 --> 00:36:18.920
And it sounded like the tankers are refusing

716
00:36:18.920 --> 00:36:19.760
to go through their limits.

717
00:36:19.760 --> 00:36:22.160
Oh, sure, because one has been hit.

718
00:36:22.160 --> 00:36:25.720
But it only takes one to be hit with a drone, only one,

719
00:36:25.720 --> 00:36:29.160
because the people driving those tankers here,

720
00:36:29.160 --> 00:36:31.680
they're doing it for a paycheck, not a bullet.

721
00:36:31.680 --> 00:36:33.560
They're not really wanting to die for this.

722
00:36:33.560 --> 00:36:37.080
This isn't a nationalist cause to ship the oil.

723
00:36:37.080 --> 00:36:38.520
Explain why it matters to the world.

724
00:36:38.520 --> 00:36:40.640
If oil doesn't go through this straight

725
00:36:40.640 --> 00:36:42.120
of Hormuz, what matters?

726
00:36:42.120 --> 00:36:42.960
What happens?

727
00:36:42.960 --> 00:36:46.240
Yeah, well, we can talk about it in technical terms,

728
00:36:46.240 --> 00:36:48.200
but the big thing to say is,

729
00:36:48.200 --> 00:36:51.840
this is what's gonna increase the price of gas at the pump.

730
00:36:51.840 --> 00:36:53.160
And it's already gone up.

731
00:36:53.160 --> 00:36:56.240
When you cut the flow of the oil,

732
00:36:56.240 --> 00:36:58.880
it has global effects.

733
00:36:58.880 --> 00:37:01.480
It doesn't just affect this little region here.

734
00:37:01.480 --> 00:37:04.080
It doesn't just affect China over here.

735
00:37:04.080 --> 00:37:06.000
It affects everybody.

736
00:37:06.000 --> 00:37:08.840
And that's why the Europeans are starting to freak out,

737
00:37:08.840 --> 00:37:12.640
because every government worries about,

738
00:37:12.640 --> 00:37:14.240
we talk about affordability.

739
00:37:14.240 --> 00:37:16.000
That's about to change.

740
00:37:16.000 --> 00:37:19.200
And this is your point about how it changes the politics at home,

741
00:37:19.200 --> 00:37:20.880
because people, someone goes to the pump today,

742
00:37:20.880 --> 00:37:22.760
they go, why is the oil higher?

743
00:37:22.760 --> 00:37:23.840
That's right.

744
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:28.160
Why is the, we just came, we now have 4.4% unemployment.

745
00:37:29.120 --> 00:37:31.520
If we, and President Trump was trying to say,

746
00:37:31.520 --> 00:37:35.040
it's all getting better, the interest rates are going down.

747
00:37:35.040 --> 00:37:38.440
Well, that all predicated on us not having inflation.

748
00:37:38.440 --> 00:37:41.600
You see, when the oil is cut,

749
00:37:41.600 --> 00:37:46.600
the inflation goes up, the affordability becomes a problem.

750
00:37:46.600 --> 00:37:51.200
That is what is panicking a lot of the businesses right now,

751
00:37:51.200 --> 00:37:53.120
because they're gonna lose business.

752
00:37:53.120 --> 00:37:55.920
And it's a problem of risk.

753
00:37:55.920 --> 00:37:58.240
It's not just about the damage.

754
00:37:58.240 --> 00:38:04.400
So a few of these drones can have an inordinate effect on risk.

755
00:38:04.400 --> 00:38:08.680
Now, let's bring in another piece, which is Russia,

756
00:38:08.680 --> 00:38:14.320
we find out, is providing targeting intelligence to Iran.

757
00:38:14.320 --> 00:38:18.160
Much the way we provide targeting intelligence to Ukraine

758
00:38:18.160 --> 00:38:20.840
to hit targets in Russia.

759
00:38:20.840 --> 00:38:22.000
And what does that mean?

760
00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:25.760
That means those drones, which are precision guided,

761
00:38:25.800 --> 00:38:28.920
now can more easily find exactly which ship to hit.

762
00:38:28.920 --> 00:38:31.200
So they know that Russia is doing that.

763
00:38:31.200 --> 00:38:33.520
Because we've got a pretty well confirmed from.

764
00:38:33.520 --> 00:38:37.000
Yeah, it's, you would hear much more pushback here.

765
00:38:37.000 --> 00:38:39.920
And what you're hearing from Secretary Higgseth

766
00:38:39.920 --> 00:38:41.440
is not, it's not happening.

767
00:38:41.440 --> 00:38:44.280
You're saying, well, no, well, it's not over, no,

768
00:38:44.280 --> 00:38:47.280
it's happening and they're worried because that's the,

769
00:38:47.280 --> 00:38:48.960
that's the again, the dancing around.

770
00:38:48.960 --> 00:38:52.600
They're not denying the fact that it's actually happening.

771
00:38:52.600 --> 00:38:54.920
I think Trump actually when asked said something,

772
00:38:54.920 --> 00:38:57.440
words to the effective, I wouldn't blame them

773
00:38:57.440 --> 00:38:58.960
because that's what we do to them.

774
00:38:58.960 --> 00:39:00.360
Exactly, exactly.

775
00:39:00.360 --> 00:39:02.440
And why is he talking to Putin today?

776
00:39:02.440 --> 00:39:04.480
He's not talking, he was just on the phone with Putin

777
00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:06.240
before he did his press conference.

778
00:39:06.240 --> 00:39:07.960
What's he talking to Putin about?

779
00:39:07.960 --> 00:39:10.160
Bad intel, I'm sure.

780
00:39:10.160 --> 00:39:14.040
And maybe cut in a deal, which is Will deny the Ukrainians,

781
00:39:14.040 --> 00:39:17.040
the intel, if you deny, you see this is the,

782
00:39:17.040 --> 00:39:22.040
this is the cascading effects of the politics dominates.

783
00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:24.800
The tactics.

784
00:39:24.800 --> 00:39:26.120
And yeah, that's exactly what Trump said.

785
00:39:26.120 --> 00:39:29.680
He said on March the 7th, when asked about Russia

786
00:39:29.680 --> 00:39:32.600
teaming up with Iran on intelligence, he said,

787
00:39:32.600 --> 00:39:36.080
if we asked them, they'd say we do it against them.

788
00:39:36.080 --> 00:39:37.200
Wouldn't they say that?

789
00:39:37.200 --> 00:39:38.400
We do it against them.

790
00:39:39.760 --> 00:39:41.360
It's almost justifying it.

791
00:39:41.360 --> 00:39:43.840
Trump often just speaks his mind.

792
00:39:43.840 --> 00:39:45.240
Sometimes he kind of hides things,

793
00:39:45.240 --> 00:39:47.200
but often he speaks his mind.

794
00:39:47.200 --> 00:39:49.160
And what you're seeing here is,

795
00:39:49.920 --> 00:39:52.160
this is the natural thing.

796
00:39:52.160 --> 00:39:55.760
Russia is what's good for the goose, good for the gander.

797
00:39:55.760 --> 00:39:58.240
They're doing the same thing to us that we've done to them.

798
00:39:58.240 --> 00:40:02.080
And they have, and they're doing it to hurt us, you see.

799
00:40:02.080 --> 00:40:07.080
So rather than just spasmatically or spasm response here,

800
00:40:07.080 --> 00:40:10.680
which we often think, the foes we're up against are stupid.

801
00:40:10.680 --> 00:40:12.280
We essentially think they're dumb.

802
00:40:12.280 --> 00:40:14.160
We call that irrational.

803
00:40:14.160 --> 00:40:19.120
But what's really happening, Stephen, is since the Vietnam War,

804
00:40:19.120 --> 00:40:21.920
we have been up against foes that have understood something

805
00:40:21.920 --> 00:40:24.320
about America, which is the way to get at us

806
00:40:24.320 --> 00:40:26.520
is politically.

807
00:40:26.520 --> 00:40:29.160
Make it a long war.

808
00:40:29.160 --> 00:40:30.680
Play the politics.

809
00:40:30.680 --> 00:40:33.360
You can't go toe to toe with us on the battlefield.

810
00:40:33.360 --> 00:40:35.720
We'll just clean their clock over and over.

811
00:40:35.720 --> 00:40:37.720
They don't often try.

812
00:40:37.720 --> 00:40:39.680
They don't go toe to toe with us.

813
00:40:39.680 --> 00:40:43.720
We lost the Vietnam War with never losing a battle.

814
00:40:43.720 --> 00:40:45.240
How did we lose?

815
00:40:45.240 --> 00:40:50.640
We lost the long game, 58,000 dead, no end in sight,

816
00:40:50.640 --> 00:40:51.760
a forever war.

817
00:40:51.760 --> 00:40:54.080
What are we doing this for?

818
00:40:54.080 --> 00:40:57.280
That is how the North Vietnamese won.

819
00:40:57.280 --> 00:41:00.600
And that's how the Afghan Taliban won.

820
00:41:00.600 --> 00:41:03.360
That's how the bad guys typically beat us.

821
00:41:03.360 --> 00:41:05.960
They don't always win, but the bottom line

822
00:41:05.960 --> 00:41:08.600
is we have a soft underbelly.

823
00:41:08.600 --> 00:41:11.720
It's not the military.

824
00:41:11.720 --> 00:41:14.240
Much of the reason most people haven't posted content

825
00:41:14.240 --> 00:41:17.000
or built their personal brand is because it's hard

826
00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:19.400
and it's time consuming and we're all very, very busy.

827
00:41:19.400 --> 00:41:22.280
And if you've never posted something before,

828
00:41:22.280 --> 00:41:24.800
there's so many factors in your psychology

829
00:41:24.800 --> 00:41:26.520
that stop you wanting to post.

830
00:41:26.520 --> 00:41:27.840
What people will think of you.

831
00:41:27.840 --> 00:41:28.800
Am I doing this right?

832
00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:31.200
Is the thing I'm saying absolutely stupid?

833
00:41:31.200 --> 00:41:34.920
All of these result in paralysis, which means you don't post

834
00:41:34.920 --> 00:41:36.920
and your feed goes bare.

835
00:41:36.920 --> 00:41:39.200
I'm an investor in a company called Stan Store,

836
00:41:39.200 --> 00:41:40.560
which you've probably had me talk about.

837
00:41:40.560 --> 00:41:42.920
And what they've been building is this new tool called Stanley

838
00:41:42.920 --> 00:41:46.120
that uses AI, looks at your feed, looks at your tone of voice,

839
00:41:46.120 --> 00:41:48.440
looks at your history, looks at your best performing posts

840
00:41:48.440 --> 00:41:50.280
and tells you what you should post.

841
00:41:50.280 --> 00:41:51.920
Makes those posts for you.

842
00:41:51.920 --> 00:41:54.320
You can also use it for inspiration.

843
00:41:54.320 --> 00:41:56.040
And sometimes what we need when we're thinking

844
00:41:56.040 --> 00:41:58.120
about doing a post for our social media channels

845
00:41:58.120 --> 00:41:59.400
is inspiration.

846
00:41:59.400 --> 00:42:01.840
Building an audience has fundamentally changed my life.

847
00:42:01.840 --> 00:42:03.520
And I think it could change yours too.

848
00:42:03.520 --> 00:42:06.480
So I'm inviting you to give this new tool a shot

849
00:42:06.480 --> 00:42:07.920
and let me know what you think.

850
00:42:07.920 --> 00:42:12.480
All you have to do is search coach.stan.store now to get started.

851
00:42:12.520 --> 00:42:14.720
One of the smartest things a business can do

852
00:42:14.720 --> 00:42:17.000
is build like a bigger company,

853
00:42:17.000 --> 00:42:19.240
without actually hiring like one.

854
00:42:19.240 --> 00:42:21.120
But the problem we all face is that most companies

855
00:42:21.120 --> 00:42:22.920
don't have every skill in house.

856
00:42:22.920 --> 00:42:25.920
So when I look at the businesses seeing real success today,

857
00:42:25.920 --> 00:42:27.880
the consistent pattern with all of them

858
00:42:27.880 --> 00:42:29.080
is how quickly they move.

859
00:42:29.080 --> 00:42:31.440
They bring in specialists with skills and emerging areas

860
00:42:31.440 --> 00:42:32.760
to keep themselves ahead.

861
00:42:32.760 --> 00:42:34.560
Even in our company, we've spent the last year

862
00:42:34.560 --> 00:42:37.920
pulling in talent across areas like AI native strategy,

863
00:42:37.920 --> 00:42:40.240
no code builds and product workflows.

864
00:42:40.240 --> 00:42:41.920
And we find this talent for our long-term partner,

865
00:42:41.920 --> 00:42:43.120
Fiverr Pro.

866
00:42:43.120 --> 00:42:45.880
Their premium service only shows you vetted talent.

867
00:42:45.880 --> 00:42:48.120
So you've always got the safeguard

868
00:42:48.120 --> 00:42:51.200
that anyone you pull in to help you with a complex project

869
00:42:51.200 --> 00:42:52.960
has the skills that you're after

870
00:42:52.960 --> 00:42:55.120
and will deliver to the same high standards

871
00:42:55.120 --> 00:42:56.280
as your internal team.

872
00:42:56.280 --> 00:42:58.320
And, most importantly, they'll keep up with the pace.

873
00:42:58.320 --> 00:42:59.280
It's a simple strategy,

874
00:42:59.280 --> 00:43:02.000
but it lets us stay agile without compromising on quality.

875
00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:03.920
So if you need these kind of skills in your business,

876
00:43:03.920 --> 00:43:06.840
head to pro.fiverr.com to find a pioneering talent

877
00:43:06.840 --> 00:43:08.440
to fill your businesses gaps.

878
00:43:08.440 --> 00:43:10.240
That's pro.fiverr.com.

879
00:43:11.400 --> 00:43:13.200
What do you think happens next?

880
00:43:13.200 --> 00:43:16.680
If you had to, no, if you had to predict

881
00:43:16.680 --> 00:43:18.840
what you think happens next, what would you predict?

882
00:43:18.840 --> 00:43:21.200
Well, I say this at the end of the Foreign Affairs article

883
00:43:21.200 --> 00:43:23.800
that just literally came out a couple hours ago,

884
00:43:23.800 --> 00:43:26.600
which is President Trump is on the horns of a dilemma.

885
00:43:27.560 --> 00:43:29.720
He has no golden off-ramp.

886
00:43:29.720 --> 00:43:32.480
He's looking for off-ramps, but there's no golden one

887
00:43:32.480 --> 00:43:34.760
where he comes out politically ahead.

888
00:43:34.760 --> 00:43:38.200
So he's got a choice, sometimes called a Hobbsian choice,

889
00:43:39.160 --> 00:43:44.160
where you cut your losses, except political loss now,

890
00:43:44.160 --> 00:43:46.400
and right now, if he pulls back,

891
00:43:46.400 --> 00:43:47.760
and what does it mean to pull back?

892
00:43:47.760 --> 00:43:49.680
You got to pull your forces back.

893
00:43:49.680 --> 00:43:52.280
It's not enough to say you're just doing a pause.

894
00:43:52.280 --> 00:43:55.600
If you want to stop for real,

895
00:43:55.600 --> 00:43:58.840
you take those aircraft carriers and you send them out somewhere.

896
00:43:58.840 --> 00:44:01.040
You send them to Asia, you send them here,

897
00:44:01.040 --> 00:44:03.800
you got to actually make, you got to do something here.

898
00:44:03.800 --> 00:44:07.680
So choice one is you stop your bombing campaign,

899
00:44:07.840 --> 00:44:09.960
you cut your losses, you do your best to say

900
00:44:09.960 --> 00:44:11.520
we just wanted to destroy this hole,

901
00:44:11.520 --> 00:44:13.240
even though nobody will believe it.

902
00:44:13.240 --> 00:44:18.040
Okay, but that means you accept a modest loss now,

903
00:44:18.040 --> 00:44:21.000
or the other is you double down,

904
00:44:21.000 --> 00:44:23.880
and you go on for more weeks.

905
00:44:23.880 --> 00:44:26.920
Go on for more weeks hoping you'll kill this leader,

906
00:44:26.920 --> 00:44:29.200
and maybe the next one won't be so bad,

907
00:44:29.200 --> 00:44:32.840
or you'll have some other sort of outcome

908
00:44:32.840 --> 00:44:34.200
that you can't imagine.

909
00:44:34.200 --> 00:44:36.800
And Trump is nothing, I call him a chaos kid.

910
00:44:36.800 --> 00:44:39.120
He thrives in chaos.

911
00:44:39.120 --> 00:44:42.480
And he often comes out of this with something happening

912
00:44:42.480 --> 00:44:44.400
like when, you know, sort of down the road,

913
00:44:44.400 --> 00:44:47.080
you didn't expect it, he probably didn't expect it.

914
00:44:47.080 --> 00:44:50.560
But in this case, the price is more likely

915
00:44:50.560 --> 00:44:53.160
gonna be a political failure of the first order

916
00:44:53.160 --> 00:44:54.920
because we have the midterms coming.

917
00:44:54.920 --> 00:44:58.560
So if he's got a choice, stop now,

918
00:44:58.560 --> 00:45:01.600
cut your losses except a limited political defeat,

919
00:45:01.600 --> 00:45:04.320
or double down, go on for a few months,

920
00:45:04.320 --> 00:45:07.440
go through more stages of this smart bomb trap

921
00:45:07.440 --> 00:45:10.440
I'm explaining, and you're really now in

922
00:45:10.440 --> 00:45:11.960
Lyndon Johnson territory.

923
00:45:11.960 --> 00:45:14.480
Remember I mentioned before, we're in Vietnam,

924
00:45:14.480 --> 00:45:18.120
he kept escalating, kept moving up the escalation ladder,

925
00:45:18.120 --> 00:45:18.960
every wrong.

926
00:45:18.960 --> 00:45:21.000
He said, well, no, we have escalation dominance.

927
00:45:21.000 --> 00:45:22.120
We're just gonna double down.

928
00:45:22.120 --> 00:45:23.560
We're gonna hit him harder the next time.

929
00:45:23.560 --> 00:45:25.080
We're gonna do this the next time.

930
00:45:25.080 --> 00:45:26.360
Sound familiar?

931
00:45:26.360 --> 00:45:30.720
And then what happened is it became absolutely clear

932
00:45:30.760 --> 00:45:32.480
that this was going nowhere,

933
00:45:32.480 --> 00:45:35.600
and the 68 election came, was coming.

934
00:45:35.600 --> 00:45:38.320
And Lyndon Johnson's own Democrat said,

935
00:45:39.360 --> 00:45:42.600
Mr. President, we can't ride your horse into that.

936
00:45:42.600 --> 00:45:44.480
We gotta do something, and the problem is

937
00:45:44.480 --> 00:45:47.000
they didn't pull the plug fast enough to hear.

938
00:45:47.000 --> 00:45:50.040
That's how they lost, they don't pull the plug fast enough

939
00:45:50.040 --> 00:45:52.960
so you end up having a bigger loss later.

940
00:45:52.960 --> 00:45:56.640
When you talk about the underbelly that the United States has

941
00:45:56.640 --> 00:45:58.080
where they can't prolong these wars,

942
00:45:58.080 --> 00:46:00.320
am I right in thinking this is basically a function

943
00:46:01.120 --> 00:46:03.680
or a consequence of living in a democracy?

944
00:46:03.680 --> 00:46:04.960
Well, everything is.

945
00:46:04.960 --> 00:46:07.320
I think it's a function of a war of choice.

946
00:46:07.320 --> 00:46:11.240
So when we were attacked in Pearl Harbor,

947
00:46:11.240 --> 00:46:16.240
we were attacked, we were reluctant to get in World War II,

948
00:46:16.240 --> 00:46:19.240
and we didn't get in until we were actually struck

949
00:46:19.240 --> 00:46:20.920
at Pearl Harbor.

950
00:46:20.920 --> 00:46:23.280
That was enough to really make us angry.

951
00:46:23.280 --> 00:46:25.880
We were pissed off as a country, okay?

952
00:46:25.880 --> 00:46:28.840
And we were gonna get payback not just for a month,

953
00:46:28.840 --> 00:46:30.720
but we were getting some real payback here.

954
00:46:30.720 --> 00:46:33.880
And that's how vicious that island hopping campaign was

955
00:46:33.880 --> 00:46:36.160
and why it was so vicious here.

956
00:46:36.160 --> 00:46:37.600
And that went on and on.

957
00:46:37.600 --> 00:46:42.240
And when we ended the war in dropping those atomic bombs,

958
00:46:42.240 --> 00:46:45.920
22% of the American public wanted us to forget

959
00:46:45.920 --> 00:46:48.600
the Japanese surrender and drop more atomic bombs.

960
00:46:48.600 --> 00:46:51.320
22% we were that angry.

961
00:46:51.320 --> 00:46:54.800
So when we are attacked first,

962
00:46:54.800 --> 00:46:58.640
we have the politics in our advantage.

963
00:46:58.640 --> 00:47:01.240
When we do a war of choice,

964
00:47:01.240 --> 00:47:03.880
we can make up all the reasons why it was a good idea

965
00:47:03.880 --> 00:47:05.680
to start throw the first punch.

966
00:47:05.680 --> 00:47:10.400
They were gonna hit us, but when we throw that first punch first,

967
00:47:10.400 --> 00:47:11.840
that's a war of choice.

968
00:47:11.840 --> 00:47:16.680
And this puts the politics in the other camps advantage.

969
00:47:16.680 --> 00:47:20.440
And that's the problem that we're facing here.

970
00:47:20.440 --> 00:47:21.760
Iran didn't hit us first.

971
00:47:21.760 --> 00:47:23.880
They didn't hit us first in June.

972
00:47:23.880 --> 00:47:26.040
They didn't hit us first before that.

973
00:47:26.040 --> 00:47:29.400
So on this point of war of choice, yeah.

974
00:47:32.280 --> 00:47:34.040
And there's really two questions I friend of mine.

975
00:47:34.040 --> 00:47:38.080
One is, was Trump right that if he didn't attack,

976
00:47:38.080 --> 00:47:40.440
then they would have enriched uranium.

977
00:47:40.440 --> 00:47:41.960
They would have made a nuclear weapon

978
00:47:41.960 --> 00:47:43.520
and that would have put not just the region

979
00:47:43.520 --> 00:47:46.480
but the world at danger in your view.

980
00:47:46.480 --> 00:47:49.080
And then the second one is this sort of ongoing debate

981
00:47:49.080 --> 00:47:51.560
around the role of Israel in this war.

982
00:47:51.560 --> 00:47:55.200
And I think it was Marco Rubio that came out

983
00:47:55.200 --> 00:47:57.640
and I think maybe accidentally said

984
00:47:57.640 --> 00:48:00.480
that the reason why they attacked Iran

985
00:48:00.480 --> 00:48:02.640
was because they heard that Israel

986
00:48:02.640 --> 00:48:04.360
were about to attack Iran.

987
00:48:04.360 --> 00:48:06.200
So let's go back to the Friday,

988
00:48:06.200 --> 00:48:09.040
the day before we start the bombing campaign.

989
00:48:09.040 --> 00:48:13.920
This is February 27, literally 315 Washington time.

990
00:48:13.920 --> 00:48:16.080
That's when Trump makes the go decision.

991
00:48:16.080 --> 00:48:19.520
But what's in his, what is he choosing between?

992
00:48:19.520 --> 00:48:23.000
He has an offer on the table from Iran

993
00:48:23.000 --> 00:48:27.000
for a better deal than the Obama deal for America.

994
00:48:27.000 --> 00:48:30.120
And it is, it's not absolutely perfect.

995
00:48:30.120 --> 00:48:33.320
They still want to have some minor enrichment

996
00:48:33.320 --> 00:48:37.160
but the verification lots of things here.

997
00:48:37.160 --> 00:48:39.040
Now, maybe it's still not perfect,

998
00:48:39.040 --> 00:48:42.760
but President Trump has a choice on that Friday afternoon.

999
00:48:42.760 --> 00:48:46.760
He can go back and he can work this deal.

1000
00:48:46.760 --> 00:48:48.880
He can, after all, deal maker, right?

1001
00:48:48.880 --> 00:48:51.160
Let's assume he's good at deal making.

1002
00:48:51.160 --> 00:48:53.840
So we can go back and work the deal.

1003
00:48:53.840 --> 00:48:55.200
But that's not what he does.

1004
00:48:55.200 --> 00:48:58.120
What he does is he throws that deal away.

1005
00:48:58.120 --> 00:49:00.760
And also the Supreme Leader, when he killed,

1006
00:49:00.760 --> 00:49:03.600
that's the Supreme Leader was on board with that deal too.

1007
00:49:03.600 --> 00:49:05.000
And what do we do instead?

1008
00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:07.560
We go through regime change.

1009
00:49:07.560 --> 00:49:10.600
So the choices here, Steven,

1010
00:49:10.600 --> 00:49:13.800
were, before we got to stage two,

1011
00:49:13.800 --> 00:49:16.080
we were in stage one.

1012
00:49:16.080 --> 00:49:19.000
Stage one, we had hit 4-0.

1013
00:49:19.840 --> 00:49:23.440
We're negotiations and Iran's coming up

1014
00:49:23.440 --> 00:49:25.920
with a better deal than the Obama deal.

1015
00:49:25.920 --> 00:49:27.400
And what does he do?

1016
00:49:27.400 --> 00:49:29.680
He goes to stage two instead.

1017
00:49:29.680 --> 00:49:34.000
So I don't think this story you're hearing,

1018
00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:35.920
they were gonna do X, Y or Z.

1019
00:49:35.920 --> 00:49:39.680
There was a deal on the table.

1020
00:49:39.680 --> 00:49:41.400
And why did Rubio say that then?

1021
00:49:41.400 --> 00:49:42.640
Why did he say that they attacked?

1022
00:49:42.640 --> 00:49:44.680
Because Israel were gonna attack.

1023
00:49:44.680 --> 00:49:45.840
Okay, I wanna play this video,

1024
00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:47.000
which is what I'm referring to.

1025
00:49:47.000 --> 00:49:47.840
Okay.

1026
00:49:49.120 --> 00:49:52.000
If we stood and waited for that attack to come first,

1027
00:49:52.000 --> 00:49:56.000
before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties.

1028
00:49:56.000 --> 00:49:58.680
And so the president made the very wise decision.

1029
00:49:58.680 --> 00:50:01.040
We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.

1030
00:50:01.040 --> 00:50:02.440
We knew that that would precipitate

1031
00:50:02.440 --> 00:50:04.360
an attack against American forces.

1032
00:50:04.360 --> 00:50:06.760
And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them

1033
00:50:06.760 --> 00:50:08.480
before they launched those attacks,

1034
00:50:08.480 --> 00:50:10.360
we would suffer higher casualties

1035
00:50:10.360 --> 00:50:12.600
and perhaps even hire those killed.

1036
00:50:12.600 --> 00:50:14.240
And then we would all be here answering questions

1037
00:50:14.240 --> 00:50:16.200
about why we knew that and didn't act.

1038
00:50:16.200 --> 00:50:21.200
So what that shows you is that it's the tail wagging the dog

1039
00:50:21.520 --> 00:50:24.360
that Israel is going to attack.

1040
00:50:24.360 --> 00:50:26.560
As I'm saying, just to happen in June,

1041
00:50:26.560 --> 00:50:29.040
it's a replay of what happened in June.

1042
00:50:29.040 --> 00:50:30.360
Israel may well have,

1043
00:50:30.360 --> 00:50:32.720
we don't know why Israel decided to attack

1044
00:50:32.720 --> 00:50:33.720
and kill the Supreme Leader.

1045
00:50:33.720 --> 00:50:36.520
It was actually Israeli bombs who killed the Supreme Leader.

1046
00:50:36.520 --> 00:50:39.640
And also those other replacement leaders as well.

1047
00:50:39.640 --> 00:50:42.800
But Israel may well have been thinking that my goodness,

1048
00:50:42.800 --> 00:50:44.960
Trump is getting too close to a deal.

1049
00:50:44.960 --> 00:50:46.120
That's what happened in June.

1050
00:50:46.120 --> 00:50:48.920
Trump was on the edge of a deal with Iran

1051
00:50:48.920 --> 00:50:52.680
and then Israel goes and kills negotiators, you see.

1052
00:50:52.680 --> 00:50:55.200
So just think about that for a moment.

1053
00:50:55.200 --> 00:50:59.560
There, Trump is negotiating with the Iranians

1054
00:50:59.560 --> 00:51:02.960
and then they say, well, okay, come back the next day

1055
00:51:02.960 --> 00:51:04.480
and what is there the next day?

1056
00:51:04.480 --> 00:51:06.320
Israeli bombs killing them.

1057
00:51:06.320 --> 00:51:09.640
So I mean, that's not a great way to handle a partnership.

1058
00:51:09.640 --> 00:51:12.400
Well, it's just showing you we had another choice.

1059
00:51:12.400 --> 00:51:14.280
We could have told Israel not to do it.

1060
00:51:14.280 --> 00:51:16.400
We could have told Israel if you do this,

1061
00:51:16.400 --> 00:51:18.360
we're going to cut off all your military aid

1062
00:51:18.360 --> 00:51:20.040
for the next three years.

1063
00:51:20.040 --> 00:51:21.800
That would put some pressure on Israel.

1064
00:51:21.800 --> 00:51:24.720
Now then Trump would have to pay a price politically.

1065
00:51:24.720 --> 00:51:26.760
So I'm not saying that's an easy thing to do.

1066
00:51:26.760 --> 00:51:28.040
Don't get me wrong.

1067
00:51:28.040 --> 00:51:32.840
But we need to understand that these are the pressures

1068
00:51:32.840 --> 00:51:36.160
for escalation in the escalation trap.

1069
00:51:36.160 --> 00:51:39.480
So I'm trying to explain why this isn't

1070
00:51:39.480 --> 00:51:42.080
just randomly happening, Steve.

1071
00:51:42.080 --> 00:51:45.520
And it's not like, oh my goodness, I can't follow what's occurring.

1072
00:51:45.520 --> 00:51:49.000
So that's why when Trump says in today's briefing,

1073
00:51:49.000 --> 00:51:51.800
talks about stopping the air campaign,

1074
00:51:51.800 --> 00:51:54.160
is he going to stop Israel's campaign?

1075
00:51:54.160 --> 00:51:56.200
That's the question it did not come up today.

1076
00:51:56.200 --> 00:51:57.960
It's in my, I put it on my accent.

1077
00:51:57.960 --> 00:52:00.840
Though one of the big questions it did not come up

1078
00:52:00.840 --> 00:52:04.800
is President Trump, are you going to call Netanyahu

1079
00:52:04.800 --> 00:52:06.760
and tell him to stop bombing Iran?

1080
00:52:06.760 --> 00:52:09.160
Does Trump control Netanyahu and your view?

1081
00:52:09.160 --> 00:52:11.400
Well, again, it's about pressures here.

1082
00:52:11.400 --> 00:52:15.040
It's about what are the, what are the ways you don't?

1083
00:52:15.040 --> 00:52:18.280
It's not about a matter of like a personal loyalty relationship.

1084
00:52:18.280 --> 00:52:20.480
This is politics of the first order.

1085
00:52:20.480 --> 00:52:22.240
That's what I'm trying to explain.

1086
00:52:22.240 --> 00:52:26.400
So for President Trump to stop Netanyahu from doing this,

1087
00:52:26.400 --> 00:52:28.000
this will be paying a price.

1088
00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:31.480
He will have a, there are a big part of his mega constituency.

1089
00:52:31.480 --> 00:52:36.800
He's very pro, not just Israel, pro Netanyahu version of Israel.

1090
00:52:36.800 --> 00:52:39.920
So this is the tension in the politics

1091
00:52:39.920 --> 00:52:42.360
that I'm trying to explain, which is why you don't really

1092
00:52:42.360 --> 00:52:45.160
want to start the trap in the first place.

1093
00:52:45.160 --> 00:52:49.000
And I asked you a second ago, no fence sitting.

1094
00:52:49.000 --> 00:52:50.720
What happens next in this will base

1095
00:52:50.720 --> 00:52:52.520
on everything you've studied for the last 30 years,

1096
00:52:52.520 --> 00:52:53.360
the 20 years of doing so.

1097
00:52:53.360 --> 00:52:55.960
I think it's more likely than not that maybe not

1098
00:52:55.960 --> 00:52:56.800
in the next week or two.

1099
00:52:56.800 --> 00:53:00.000
I've said on my sub-sac, it's more likely than not.

1100
00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:03.720
We will get to a limited ground deployment here

1101
00:53:03.720 --> 00:53:05.440
because of the fizzle, because of the, I'm

1102
00:53:05.440 --> 00:53:08.840
just keep saying, because of the enriched material

1103
00:53:08.840 --> 00:53:12.360
that is floating around, and we know it's dispersing.

1104
00:53:12.360 --> 00:53:14.400
We know it's dispersing.

1105
00:53:14.400 --> 00:53:16.240
We don't know where it is.

1106
00:53:16.240 --> 00:53:20.240
And there could be literally hundreds of rooms,

1107
00:53:20.240 --> 00:53:23.360
not much bigger than this size, maybe two or three times

1108
00:53:23.360 --> 00:53:25.920
of this size that we're in, that could be used

1109
00:53:25.920 --> 00:53:31.040
to fashion a fat man style A-bomb.

1110
00:53:31.040 --> 00:53:33.680
Not to miniaturize it to put on a warhead.

1111
00:53:33.680 --> 00:53:35.400
That would be more sophisticated.

1112
00:53:35.400 --> 00:53:37.320
But if what you want to do is you want to have

1113
00:53:37.320 --> 00:53:42.480
a Hiroshima bomb that can kill 75,000 people in a second

1114
00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:46.760
or 10 seconds, that is what they are in the,

1115
00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:50.000
that's what we're talking about here.

1116
00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:53.200
We're not talking about can they put miniaturize the bomb

1117
00:53:53.200 --> 00:53:57.040
to put it on the nose cone of a war, of a missile?

1118
00:53:57.040 --> 00:53:58.240
This is, they don't need it.

1119
00:53:58.240 --> 00:54:00.240
That's very sophisticated stuff.

1120
00:54:00.240 --> 00:54:02.840
We couldn't do that for 10 years.

1121
00:54:02.840 --> 00:54:04.280
So I guess there's two, there's two questions

1122
00:54:04.280 --> 00:54:08.080
that come to mind the first is to understand someone's behavior.

1123
00:54:08.080 --> 00:54:10.840
You have to like understand their motivations.

1124
00:54:10.840 --> 00:54:13.960
And I think a lot about like where Trump is

1125
00:54:13.960 --> 00:54:14.920
in his

1126
00:54:16.920 --> 00:54:20.280
career legacy, how much that matters to him.

1127
00:54:20.280 --> 00:54:22.120
It appears from what I've seen,

1128
00:54:22.120 --> 00:54:24.040
the whole thing around him wanting to win the Nobel Peace

1129
00:54:24.040 --> 00:54:27.120
Prize, the, the Peace Board, the being the president,

1130
00:54:27.120 --> 00:54:28.960
that stops all the, it appears that he's thinking

1131
00:54:28.960 --> 00:54:30.680
about how he's gonna be remembered.

1132
00:54:30.680 --> 00:54:32.560
And when I'm looking at some of his interviews recently,

1133
00:54:32.560 --> 00:54:35.200
he's saying things like, I don't want it to be the case

1134
00:54:35.200 --> 00:54:38.080
that in 10 years time, we're in five years time,

1135
00:54:38.080 --> 00:54:40.480
the US have to go back in again, because like I didn't do

1136
00:54:40.480 --> 00:54:41.320
a good job.

1137
00:54:41.320 --> 00:54:44.400
And it made me start to believe that actually one of his,

1138
00:54:44.400 --> 00:54:47.160
one of the reasons why we might escalate this war further

1139
00:54:47.160 --> 00:54:50.360
from a United States perspective is because

1140
00:54:51.480 --> 00:54:54.000
legacy changes in hindsight.

1141
00:54:54.000 --> 00:54:55.680
And if we think about George W. Bush,

1142
00:54:55.680 --> 00:54:57.480
I think you're putting your finger on Steven.

1143
00:54:57.480 --> 00:55:00.760
George W. Bush's legacy now is like completely tarnished

1144
00:55:00.760 --> 00:55:03.720
because of this war and actually how it ended.

1145
00:55:03.720 --> 00:55:05.720
Yeah, but also mistaken hindsight.

1146
00:55:05.720 --> 00:55:08.960
But also now mirror image that to the Iranians.

1147
00:55:08.960 --> 00:55:11.960
Why aren't they thinking about their legacy?

1148
00:55:11.960 --> 00:55:13.680
Think about that for a moment.

1149
00:55:13.680 --> 00:55:18.120
Why would the Supreme Leader 86 years old decide

1150
00:55:18.120 --> 00:55:20.800
he's not gonna take too many more precautions?

1151
00:55:20.800 --> 00:55:23.080
How many more months does he had cancer apparently?

1152
00:55:23.080 --> 00:55:24.240
How many more months does he got?

1153
00:55:24.240 --> 00:55:25.440
How's he wanna go out?

1154
00:55:25.440 --> 00:55:26.840
How does he really wanna go out?

1155
00:55:26.840 --> 00:55:28.680
What's he wanna be remembered for?

1156
00:55:28.680 --> 00:55:31.080
A coward or does he wanna be remembered

1157
00:55:31.080 --> 00:55:34.520
as somebody who stood up for Iran, the revolution,

1158
00:55:34.520 --> 00:55:37.240
the whole thing he built his whole life for?

1159
00:55:37.240 --> 00:55:38.600
You talk about Trump where,

1160
00:55:38.600 --> 00:55:42.880
so when I get into behind, when the cameras go off

1161
00:55:42.880 --> 00:55:45.080
and I get a chance to, again,

1162
00:55:45.080 --> 00:55:46.680
let's just say go to the West Wing.

1163
00:55:46.680 --> 00:55:51.680
I'm not seeing people being picky, minor, petty.

1164
00:55:51.880 --> 00:55:55.240
I see them worried about their legacy.

1165
00:55:55.240 --> 00:55:58.240
The national security advisors, their assistants,

1166
00:55:58.240 --> 00:56:00.640
they're worrying about their legacy.

1167
00:56:00.640 --> 00:56:05.280
Do they wanna go down in the history of American history

1168
00:56:05.280 --> 00:56:07.920
as X, Y, or Z?

1169
00:56:07.920 --> 00:56:10.000
And this is how humans are.

1170
00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:14.000
It doesn't stop with how much money do you have.

1171
00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:16.360
It's what's gonna happen with your legacy.

1172
00:56:16.360 --> 00:56:20.520
So with that in mind, if you think Trump is legacy motivated,

1173
00:56:21.680 --> 00:56:22.840
does that increase the corporate?

1174
00:56:22.840 --> 00:56:24.160
I wanna be careful in part.

1175
00:56:24.160 --> 00:56:25.000
It's always a ban.

1176
00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:26.920
He can't be elected, so I'm like, that's not motivating him.

1177
00:56:26.920 --> 00:56:29.160
You play differently if you think you can win a second term,

1178
00:56:29.160 --> 00:56:30.880
which I knew would be an important term.

1179
00:56:30.880 --> 00:56:33.400
But if he is legacy motivated now,

1180
00:56:33.400 --> 00:56:35.280
when you think about which direction he's gonna grow it,

1181
00:56:35.280 --> 00:56:38.920
go in, it does appear on the balance of things

1182
00:56:38.920 --> 00:56:42.280
that he's not going to want it to be left a mess.

1183
00:56:42.280 --> 00:56:45.440
And the biggest mess that could really embarrass him

1184
00:56:45.440 --> 00:56:50.440
in his legacy with international is if Iran has a nuclear bomb

1185
00:56:51.600 --> 00:56:56.040
and they detonate a test, say next September.

1186
00:56:56.040 --> 00:56:59.400
Let's just imagine what would happen next September.

1187
00:56:59.400 --> 00:57:01.600
So people need to think about,

1188
00:57:01.600 --> 00:57:04.960
see, the discussion of Iran and nuclear bombs here

1189
00:57:04.960 --> 00:57:07.160
is not very strategic.

1190
00:57:07.160 --> 00:57:08.880
It's to scare you.

1191
00:57:08.880 --> 00:57:10.080
Oh, they're gonna get a bomb

1192
00:57:10.080 --> 00:57:11.800
and the first one's gonna go on Tel Aviv,

1193
00:57:11.800 --> 00:57:14.120
the second one's gonna go on New York.

1194
00:57:14.120 --> 00:57:16.640
I don't think that's the sequence.

1195
00:57:16.640 --> 00:57:20.080
Why would they, if they're willing to commit suicide

1196
00:57:20.080 --> 00:57:23.040
to take out Tel Aviv, they don't need 16 bombs.

1197
00:57:23.040 --> 00:57:25.760
Okay, if they're willing to have their entire population

1198
00:57:25.760 --> 00:57:28.320
destroyed by, they just need one bomb,

1199
00:57:28.320 --> 00:57:30.480
take out Tel Aviv, they're done, right?

1200
00:57:30.480 --> 00:57:31.840
That's not what's going on.

1201
00:57:31.840 --> 00:57:33.880
They're following the North Korea plan.

1202
00:57:33.880 --> 00:57:36.840
The North Korea plan, the North Korea figured out

1203
00:57:36.840 --> 00:57:38.920
when we went through this with North Korea in the 90s,

1204
00:57:38.920 --> 00:57:40.560
okay, the very same thing,

1205
00:57:40.560 --> 00:57:41.920
except we didn't do the bombing

1206
00:57:41.920 --> 00:57:45.680
because it was not gonna, we avoided the trap.

1207
00:57:45.680 --> 00:57:49.280
What they want is multiple bombs at the same time.

1208
00:57:49.280 --> 00:57:52.360
So what they wanna do, if they can do this,

1209
00:57:52.400 --> 00:57:57.240
is have say five bombs working at the same time.

1210
00:57:57.240 --> 00:58:02.000
And the first bomb goes off as a test in the mountains,

1211
00:58:02.000 --> 00:58:02.880
in the mountains.

1212
00:58:02.880 --> 00:58:04.320
And then what do we say?

1213
00:58:04.320 --> 00:58:06.560
Oh, they blew it, they're stupid,

1214
00:58:06.560 --> 00:58:08.120
they blew their one test,

1215
00:58:08.120 --> 00:58:11.520
and then they do a second test.

1216
00:58:11.520 --> 00:58:13.840
Still in their mountains, okay.

1217
00:58:13.840 --> 00:58:16.720
When we dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima,

1218
00:58:16.720 --> 00:58:18.720
wasn't clear we had anymore.

1219
00:58:18.720 --> 00:58:20.280
When we dropped the second one,

1220
00:58:20.280 --> 00:58:22.800
nobody needed to wait for a third or four.

1221
00:58:22.800 --> 00:58:25.720
Nobody really, they knew more would come.

1222
00:58:25.720 --> 00:58:26.760
You see what I mean?

1223
00:58:26.760 --> 00:58:31.760
So with Iran, this is, again, we're talking about now,

1224
00:58:32.480 --> 00:58:35.880
let's call it the Brown Belt or Black Belt strategy here,

1225
00:58:35.880 --> 00:58:39.000
that they are, and notice they are been very smart

1226
00:58:39.000 --> 00:58:40.440
in their escalation.

1227
00:58:41.400 --> 00:58:43.920
What you would do is the North Korea strategy,

1228
00:58:43.920 --> 00:58:46.560
which is again, you want multiple bombs,

1229
00:58:46.560 --> 00:58:48.440
and then you wanna do some tests.

1230
00:58:48.440 --> 00:58:51.320
And even if one doesn't quite work, you wanna have another.

1231
00:58:51.320 --> 00:58:53.440
You wanna have multiple bombs

1232
00:58:53.440 --> 00:58:56.720
so that you can do multiple tests, you say.

1233
00:58:56.720 --> 00:59:01.720
And that is how North Korea basically stopped Trump

1234
00:59:02.600 --> 00:59:03.840
trying to kill the leader.

1235
00:59:03.840 --> 00:59:06.200
So notice that Trump wants to say,

1236
00:59:06.200 --> 00:59:08.160
it was just his winning personality,

1237
00:59:08.160 --> 00:59:11.000
because Trump is so charming here,

1238
00:59:11.000 --> 00:59:14.440
but North Korea now has 60 working nuclear weapons

1239
00:59:14.440 --> 00:59:16.680
as best we can tell.

1240
00:59:16.760 --> 00:59:20.000
And the idea that we're gonna start killing leaders

1241
00:59:20.000 --> 00:59:21.840
in North Korea anytime soon,

1242
00:59:21.840 --> 00:59:23.400
I'm not sure that's gonna happen.

1243
00:59:23.400 --> 00:59:24.600
That kind of a mean now, right?

1244
00:59:24.600 --> 00:59:27.680
Well, and notice that Ukraine had a bunch

1245
00:59:27.680 --> 00:59:30.120
of nuclear weapons in the 90s, gave them up,

1246
00:59:30.120 --> 00:59:32.040
and there's a lot of people in Ukraine right now

1247
00:59:32.040 --> 00:59:34.640
are saying, boy, I wish we had those nuclear weapons back

1248
00:59:34.640 --> 00:59:36.560
or else we wouldn't be fighting this war.

1249
00:59:36.560 --> 00:59:38.560
So you start to look at the history.

1250
00:59:38.560 --> 00:59:40.880
Why does America have nuclear weapons here?

1251
00:59:40.880 --> 00:59:42.280
Are we an evil country?

1252
00:59:42.280 --> 00:59:44.760
And the reason we have is because we're evil,

1253
00:59:44.760 --> 00:59:46.400
we want it for our security.

1254
00:59:46.400 --> 00:59:49.680
So why doesn't Iran want it for their security?

1255
00:59:49.680 --> 00:59:52.120
So this is the strategy part

1256
00:59:52.120 --> 00:59:54.280
that we have to, the politics, Steve,

1257
00:59:54.280 --> 00:59:55.920
and I keep trying to talk about.

1258
00:59:55.920 --> 00:59:58.200
So you're saying your prediction is

1259
00:59:58.200 --> 01:00:00.160
that we're gonna move to stage three,

1260
01:00:00.160 --> 01:00:03.280
where Trump puts, okay, I'll go 75, 25.

1261
01:00:03.280 --> 01:00:05.120
75% which way?

1262
01:00:05.120 --> 01:00:07.960
That we will put, we will send in some ground forces

1263
01:00:07.960 --> 01:00:10.120
to get that dispersed material.

1264
01:00:10.120 --> 01:00:13.560
The only 25% would be if somehow magically

1265
01:00:13.560 --> 01:00:15.320
the Iranians gave it to us.

1266
01:00:15.320 --> 01:00:17.640
So that's where the 25% comes from.

1267
01:00:17.640 --> 01:00:19.440
Cause here is some chance.

1268
01:00:19.440 --> 01:00:20.280
You have maybe there.

1269
01:00:20.280 --> 01:00:21.120
There's some, I don't wanna,

1270
01:00:21.120 --> 01:00:23.280
I mean, we live in the real world here.

1271
01:00:23.280 --> 01:00:26.440
So I, but I think the problem we're gonna face is

1272
01:00:26.440 --> 01:00:28.320
it's gonna become more,

1273
01:00:28.320 --> 01:00:31.200
and if you're in Iran right now,

1274
01:00:31.200 --> 01:00:33.400
exactly why aren't you

1275
01:00:33.400 --> 01:00:36.000
fashioning the nuclear weapon?

1276
01:00:36.000 --> 01:00:37.680
We're already killing you.

1277
01:00:37.680 --> 01:00:40.600
We can pause for months and say we won't kill you

1278
01:00:40.600 --> 01:00:42.880
and then you wake up one day and you're dead.

1279
01:00:43.120 --> 01:00:46.080
We've done this moving now several times on Iran.

1280
01:00:46.080 --> 01:00:50.560
Your best chance of survival is a nuclear weapon.

1281
01:00:50.560 --> 01:00:54.280
And so we now know that, our Intel knows that,

1282
01:00:54.280 --> 01:00:58.320
Israel now knows that we've taken these options.

1283
01:00:58.320 --> 01:01:01.480
So unless Trump will make a deal,

1284
01:01:01.480 --> 01:01:03.040
that's that 25%.

1285
01:01:03.040 --> 01:01:06.000
So I think if he makes a deal,

1286
01:01:06.000 --> 01:01:09.400
then there's a chance that Iran will go forward here.

1287
01:01:09.400 --> 01:01:12.440
If the 75% path plays out,

1288
01:01:12.440 --> 01:01:14.520
yeah, we put boots on the ground.

1289
01:01:14.520 --> 01:01:15.840
Yep.

1290
01:01:15.840 --> 01:01:17.720
What happens then?

1291
01:01:17.720 --> 01:01:19.600
Now we're at stage three.

1292
01:01:19.600 --> 01:01:21.840
Now we've moved to stage three

1293
01:01:21.840 --> 01:01:26.240
because we have to search very, not just,

1294
01:01:26.240 --> 01:01:29.800
so we will start by deploying ground forces

1295
01:01:29.800 --> 01:01:31.200
in a very limited area.

1296
01:01:31.200 --> 01:01:33.920
Say we're gonna go to Esophon, it's called.

1297
01:01:33.920 --> 01:01:36.680
That's the, do we have a,

1298
01:01:36.680 --> 01:01:38.920
I mean, you could try and round that, does that work?

1299
01:01:38.960 --> 01:01:40.600
The thing I'm trying to explain, yeah,

1300
01:01:40.600 --> 01:01:43.080
assume this is Iran, okay?

1301
01:01:43.080 --> 01:01:47.000
We will start by putting in a small footprint.

1302
01:01:47.000 --> 01:01:50.080
And again, we have several options here to do it.

1303
01:01:51.080 --> 01:01:55.480
And so the hunt will be for the enriched material.

1304
01:01:55.480 --> 01:01:59.800
But let's say that we even find it, Stephen,

1305
01:01:59.800 --> 01:02:02.840
how do we know that in the intervening

1306
01:02:02.840 --> 01:02:04.960
almost a year since the bombing,

1307
01:02:04.960 --> 01:02:06.960
10 months since the bombing,

1308
01:02:06.960 --> 01:02:11.760
how do we know they haven't enriched more somewhere else?

1309
01:02:11.760 --> 01:02:16.640
Because this is what happened with the WMD and Iraq

1310
01:02:16.640 --> 01:02:20.720
and Sodom Hussein in the 90s through 2003.

1311
01:02:20.720 --> 01:02:25.400
We had inspectors in, we could never be sure.

1312
01:02:25.400 --> 01:02:28.160
There wasn't material.

1313
01:02:28.160 --> 01:02:31.080
And the problem was over time,

1314
01:02:31.080 --> 01:02:35.280
the fear got worse and worse and worse.

1315
01:02:35.320 --> 01:02:37.600
And the fear is a nuclear handoff

1316
01:02:37.600 --> 01:02:39.600
or the radiological handoff.

1317
01:02:39.600 --> 01:02:43.400
You hand off some of that material to Hezbollah,

1318
01:02:43.400 --> 01:02:44.680
to the Houthis.

1319
01:02:44.680 --> 01:02:47.080
They, who are Hezbollah and the Houthis?

1320
01:02:47.080 --> 01:02:48.080
I like, they are.

1321
01:02:48.080 --> 01:02:51.600
Terrorist groups, we call them terrorist groups.

1322
01:02:51.600 --> 01:02:55.240
And the, at Hezbollah, which is this famous terrorist group,

1323
01:02:55.240 --> 01:02:58.480
started in 1982, how did Hezbollah start?

1324
01:02:58.480 --> 01:02:59.480
Where'd it come from?

1325
01:02:59.480 --> 01:03:00.760
Is it the CIA again?

1326
01:03:00.760 --> 01:03:02.080
No, it is real.

1327
01:03:02.080 --> 01:03:04.600
Israel invades Southern Lebanon

1328
01:03:04.600 --> 01:03:08.920
in June of 1982 with 78,000 combat soldiers,

1329
01:03:08.920 --> 01:03:10.880
3,000 tanks in our vehicle.

1330
01:03:10.880 --> 01:03:11.880
So think about that.

1331
01:03:11.880 --> 01:03:15.160
That's like invading Chicago with 78,000.

1332
01:03:15.160 --> 01:03:19.160
So just, or LA, with 78,000, okay?

1333
01:03:19.160 --> 01:03:23.480
So they invade Southern Lebanon with 78,000 Israel does.

1334
01:03:23.480 --> 01:03:28.480
One month later, Hezbollah is born as a resistance movement.

1335
01:03:28.720 --> 01:03:33.520
So Hezbollah was born out of resistance to Israel.

1336
01:03:33.520 --> 01:03:35.680
They have hated Israel from the beginning,

1337
01:03:35.680 --> 01:03:38.320
because that's how they were born, you see.

1338
01:03:38.320 --> 01:03:41.520
So what you have is, you have a group that's hot,

1339
01:03:41.520 --> 01:03:43.800
been radical since, and since 82.

1340
01:03:43.800 --> 01:03:46.680
This has been going on since 82.

1341
01:03:46.680 --> 01:03:50.480
Israel just can't put that, that Hezbollah group out of business.

1342
01:03:50.480 --> 01:03:53.080
And what are they doing literally this week?

1343
01:03:53.080 --> 01:03:55.760
They're trying to depopulate this bay route,

1344
01:03:55.760 --> 01:03:57.040
the city of bay route.

1345
01:03:57.040 --> 01:03:59.880
Because what happens when you go up against terrorist groups,

1346
01:03:59.880 --> 01:04:01.000
which we haven't described.

1347
01:04:01.040 --> 01:04:03.640
But the terrorist group here is like a group

1348
01:04:03.640 --> 01:04:06.320
that's in a sea of people, okay?

1349
01:04:06.320 --> 01:04:07.920
And you keep saying all I wanna do

1350
01:04:07.920 --> 01:04:10.040
is get rid of that terrorist group.

1351
01:04:10.040 --> 01:04:14.000
The problem is that in all that effort,

1352
01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:16.560
military effort to get rid of the terrorist group,

1353
01:04:16.560 --> 01:04:20.600
you do kill them, but they regenerate, and they regenerate,

1354
01:04:20.600 --> 01:04:23.480
and they regenerate just as Hezbollah has for,

1355
01:04:23.480 --> 01:04:26.800
God, 45 years, almost, okay?

1356
01:04:26.800 --> 01:04:29.120
And so what do you then push to do?

1357
01:04:29.120 --> 01:04:31.000
Get rid of all the people.

1358
01:04:31.000 --> 01:04:32.960
So you think I'll just genocide?

1359
01:04:32.960 --> 01:04:34.240
I don't wanna use those terms,

1360
01:04:34.240 --> 01:04:35.600
because I've written about that,

1361
01:04:35.600 --> 01:04:38.240
that has certain, very specific,

1362
01:04:38.240 --> 01:04:40.200
so that's a whole conversation here.

1363
01:04:40.200 --> 01:04:41.160
But I just wanna point out,

1364
01:04:41.160 --> 01:04:44.240
how is it that Israel got itself into the idea

1365
01:04:44.240 --> 01:04:48.920
they were going to cleanse, expel large portions

1366
01:04:48.920 --> 01:04:51.880
of the two million out of Gaza?

1367
01:04:51.880 --> 01:04:55.520
That happened because they got into stage three

1368
01:04:55.520 --> 01:04:57.800
of the escalation trap in Gaza.

1369
01:04:57.800 --> 01:04:59.880
So this isn't just about America.

1370
01:04:59.880 --> 01:05:02.560
So we're only talking about the escalation frameworks

1371
01:05:02.560 --> 01:05:05.000
with respect to this one conflict really.

1372
01:05:05.000 --> 01:05:07.560
It applies much more broadly.

1373
01:05:07.560 --> 01:05:11.280
I've developed these since I taught for the Air Force,

1374
01:05:11.280 --> 01:05:15.360
because I needed to find a way to help our government,

1375
01:05:15.360 --> 01:05:20.360
our military understand how the transition

1376
01:05:20.360 --> 01:05:25.360
from the bombing or the military piece to the outcome.

1377
01:05:25.440 --> 01:05:28.640
And what's in the middle is the military,

1378
01:05:28.640 --> 01:05:31.360
the bombs change politics.

1379
01:05:31.360 --> 01:05:34.400
They change politics in the enemy.

1380
01:05:34.400 --> 01:05:37.400
They change politics for us.

1381
01:05:37.400 --> 01:05:39.840
For us, we don't wanna lose,

1382
01:05:39.840 --> 01:05:43.760
and that's why we got stuck in two forever wars.

1383
01:05:44.840 --> 01:05:48.760
And now we may well just get right back into another,

1384
01:05:48.760 --> 01:05:50.320
not because Trump wants to,

1385
01:05:50.320 --> 01:05:52.000
so being sucked into it.

1386
01:05:52.000 --> 01:05:54.360
So what happens off to stage three?

1387
01:05:55.240 --> 01:05:56.720
After stage three,

1388
01:05:56.720 --> 01:05:59.760
this is what America has faced in Vietnam,

1389
01:05:59.760 --> 01:06:04.120
and President Biden faced this in spades here.

1390
01:06:04.120 --> 01:06:06.760
When you try to pull out after you're in stage three

1391
01:06:06.760 --> 01:06:09.720
and end these ongoing conflicts here,

1392
01:06:09.720 --> 01:06:12.840
usually it ends poorly for your legacy.

1393
01:06:12.840 --> 01:06:15.320
And you saw that with Lyndon Johnson,

1394
01:06:15.320 --> 01:06:17.960
and you saw that with President Biden.

1395
01:06:17.960 --> 01:06:20.640
President Biden, actually President Trump

1396
01:06:20.640 --> 01:06:22.920
is the one who was negotiating with the Taliban

1397
01:06:22.920 --> 01:06:26.240
to pull out, but President Trump wouldn't leave.

1398
01:06:26.240 --> 01:06:27.880
Not leave, he didn't leave before.

1399
01:06:27.880 --> 01:06:29.520
Who did he hand it off to?

1400
01:06:29.520 --> 01:06:31.320
He handed it off to Biden.

1401
01:06:31.320 --> 01:06:34.360
Biden pulled out, and what has Biden's legacy been?

1402
01:06:34.360 --> 01:06:37.400
It's been negative ever since.

1403
01:06:37.400 --> 01:06:40.520
If you look at his opinion polls, President Biden,

1404
01:06:40.520 --> 01:06:42.800
you will see he was riding high

1405
01:06:42.800 --> 01:06:44.680
until he withdrew from Afghanistan,

1406
01:06:44.680 --> 01:06:46.760
and he never recovered.

1407
01:06:46.760 --> 01:06:48.760
Yes, inflation hurt too.

1408
01:06:48.760 --> 01:06:52.880
The bigger hit was the Afghanistan problem.

1409
01:06:52.880 --> 01:06:56.600
And this is where, this is why President Trump is really stuck.

1410
01:06:56.600 --> 01:06:59.600
You see, he's on that horns of the dilemma.

1411
01:06:59.600 --> 01:07:01.600
Does he want to accept the short term price,

1412
01:07:01.600 --> 01:07:05.480
which is real, or does he want to go and double down?

1413
01:07:05.480 --> 01:07:08.840
And then you face the potential long term price

1414
01:07:08.840 --> 01:07:12.640
of becoming LBJ and President Biden.

1415
01:07:13.640 --> 01:07:14.960
This company that I've just invested in,

1416
01:07:14.960 --> 01:07:16.000
it's growing like crazy.

1417
01:07:16.000 --> 01:07:17.280
I want to be the one to tell you about it,

1418
01:07:17.280 --> 01:07:18.200
because I think it's going to create

1419
01:07:18.200 --> 01:07:20.200
such a huge productivity advantage for you.

1420
01:07:20.200 --> 01:07:22.720
This flow is an app that you can get on your computer,

1421
01:07:22.720 --> 01:07:24.360
and on your phone, on all your devices,

1422
01:07:24.360 --> 01:07:26.160
and it allows you to speak to your technology.

1423
01:07:26.160 --> 01:07:27.520
So instead of me writing at an email,

1424
01:07:27.520 --> 01:07:29.160
I click one button on my phone,

1425
01:07:29.160 --> 01:07:31.800
and I can just speak the email into existence,

1426
01:07:31.800 --> 01:07:34.600
and it uses AI to clean up what I was saying.

1427
01:07:34.600 --> 01:07:36.720
And then when I'm done, I just hit this one button here,

1428
01:07:36.720 --> 01:07:38.480
and the whole email is written for me,

1429
01:07:38.480 --> 01:07:41.680
and it's saving me so much time in a day,

1430
01:07:41.680 --> 01:07:43.560
because Whisper learns how I write,

1431
01:07:43.560 --> 01:07:45.880
so on WhatsApp it knows how I am, a little bit more casual,

1432
01:07:45.880 --> 01:07:47.640
on email a little bit more professional.

1433
01:07:47.640 --> 01:07:49.560
And also, there's this really interesting thing they've just done,

1434
01:07:49.560 --> 01:07:52.880
if I can create little phrases to automatically do the work for me.

1435
01:07:52.880 --> 01:07:54.600
I can just say Jack's LinkedIn,

1436
01:07:54.600 --> 01:07:56.640
and it copies Jack's LinkedIn profile for me,

1437
01:07:56.640 --> 01:07:58.440
because it knows who Jack is in my life.

1438
01:07:58.440 --> 01:07:59.640
This is saving me a huge amount of time.

1439
01:07:59.640 --> 01:08:02.320
This company is growing like absolute crazy.

1440
01:08:02.320 --> 01:08:03.720
And this is why I invested in the business,

1441
01:08:03.720 --> 01:08:05.240
and why they're now a sponsor of this show.

1442
01:08:05.240 --> 01:08:06.200
And Whisper Flow is, frankly,

1443
01:08:06.200 --> 01:08:09.040
becoming the worst-kept secret in business,

1444
01:08:09.040 --> 01:08:10.440
productivity, and entrepreneurship.

1445
01:08:10.440 --> 01:08:11.960
Check it out now at Whisper Flow,

1446
01:08:11.960 --> 01:08:17.840
spot W-I-S-P-R-F-L-O-W-D-A-I-S-D-E-L-M.

1447
01:08:17.840 --> 01:08:19.440
It will be a game change if you.

1448
01:08:20.640 --> 01:08:22.960
We have finally caved in.

1449
01:08:22.960 --> 01:08:24.320
So many of you have asked us,

1450
01:08:24.320 --> 01:08:27.840
if we could bundle the conversation cards with the 1% diary.

1451
01:08:27.840 --> 01:08:29.320
For those of you that don't know,

1452
01:08:29.320 --> 01:08:31.520
every single time a guest sits here with me in the chair,

1453
01:08:31.520 --> 01:08:33.520
they leave a question in the diary of a CEO,

1454
01:08:33.520 --> 01:08:35.840
and then I ask that question to the next guest.

1455
01:08:35.840 --> 01:08:39.160
We don't release those questions in any environment other than

1456
01:08:39.160 --> 01:08:41.120
on these incredible conversation cards.

1457
01:08:41.120 --> 01:08:44.200
These have become a fantastic tool for people in relationships,

1458
01:08:44.200 --> 01:08:46.840
people in teams, in big corporations,

1459
01:08:46.840 --> 01:08:48.760
and also family members to connect with each other.

1460
01:08:48.760 --> 01:08:50.920
With that, we also have the 1% diary,

1461
01:08:50.920 --> 01:08:54.160
which is this incredible tool to change habits in your life.

1462
01:08:54.160 --> 01:08:55.840
So many of you have asked if it was possible

1463
01:08:55.840 --> 01:08:57.480
to buy both at the same time,

1464
01:08:57.480 --> 01:08:59.880
especially people in big companies.

1465
01:08:59.880 --> 01:09:02.720
So what we've done is we've bundled them together,

1466
01:09:02.720 --> 01:09:04.480
and you can buy both at the same time.

1467
01:09:04.480 --> 01:09:05.840
And if you wanna drive connection,

1468
01:09:05.840 --> 01:09:08.240
and then still habit change in your company,

1469
01:09:08.240 --> 01:09:10.080
head to the diary.com to inquire,

1470
01:09:10.080 --> 01:09:12.040
and our team will be in touch.

1471
01:09:12.040 --> 01:09:13.280
I have to ask then, you know,

1472
01:09:13.280 --> 01:09:14.720
you said when you're in the White House,

1473
01:09:14.720 --> 01:09:16.080
they're very smart people.

1474
01:09:16.080 --> 01:09:16.920
Yeah, pretty smart.

1475
01:09:16.920 --> 01:09:19.960
Presumably Trump knew this stuff,

1476
01:09:19.960 --> 01:09:21.720
or someone around him knew that by the way,

1477
01:09:21.720 --> 01:09:24.280
when you drop bombs, these sort of very specific bombs,

1478
01:09:24.280 --> 01:09:27.240
we have now that can hit a very narrow target,

1479
01:09:27.240 --> 01:09:28.520
and take out a leader,

1480
01:09:29.800 --> 01:09:31.160
you get into an escalation trap.

1481
01:09:31.160 --> 01:09:32.640
Surely he knew this.

1482
01:09:32.640 --> 01:09:34.120
I believe, I believe,

1483
01:09:34.120 --> 01:09:37.640
Gerald Kane told him almost this in so many words.

1484
01:09:37.640 --> 01:09:39.720
I believe that I don't have the exact evidence for it,

1485
01:09:39.720 --> 01:09:41.280
but we have some inklings of it.

1486
01:09:41.280 --> 01:09:43.560
What do you think he thought was going to happen?

1487
01:09:43.560 --> 01:09:48.560
I think he, I've described Trump as the ultimate chaos kit.

1488
01:09:49.040 --> 01:09:51.080
There are people who thrive in chaos.

1489
01:09:51.080 --> 01:09:55.480
They feel the best when they're in a chaotic situation,

1490
01:09:55.480 --> 01:10:00.280
and I think that he believes he can navigate the chaos

1491
01:10:00.280 --> 01:10:01.800
better than anybody else.

1492
01:10:01.800 --> 01:10:02.800
So what I wanna,

1493
01:10:02.800 --> 01:10:04.240
the answer to the question I was looking for is,

1494
01:10:04.240 --> 01:10:06.160
what did he think was going to happen?

1495
01:10:06.160 --> 01:10:08.000
Did he think I'll drop these bombs?

1496
01:10:08.000 --> 01:10:09.960
How many will be out, someone else will come in,

1497
01:10:09.960 --> 01:10:11.640
then we'll negotiate with that guy,

1498
01:10:11.640 --> 01:10:12.640
and then we'll get a better deal.

1499
01:10:12.640 --> 01:10:15.240
I think that's not quite, I think that's too specific.

1500
01:10:15.240 --> 01:10:16.760
People keep looking for that.

1501
01:10:16.760 --> 01:10:21.600
In my experience here, it also is that's too narrow

1502
01:10:21.600 --> 01:10:24.080
of a way to understand what I think happened here.

1503
01:10:24.080 --> 01:10:25.600
And again, we're reading quite a bit

1504
01:10:25.600 --> 01:10:27.320
into very few tea leaves here,

1505
01:10:27.320 --> 01:10:29.560
because it will come out over time.

1506
01:10:29.560 --> 01:10:33.240
But I believe that what you're seeing with President Trump

1507
01:10:33.240 --> 01:10:35.800
is he likes to do what's called mixing it up.

1508
01:10:35.800 --> 01:10:38.040
He wants to get the chaos going,

1509
01:10:38.040 --> 01:10:42.040
and then he reads the chaos very well,

1510
01:10:42.040 --> 01:10:45.320
and when it's a media storm, man,

1511
01:10:45.320 --> 01:10:47.160
there's very few people that have beaten him.

1512
01:10:47.160 --> 01:10:48.000
Just think about that.

1513
01:10:48.000 --> 01:10:49.400
That's why he's president twice.

1514
01:10:49.400 --> 01:10:53.160
He's beaten quite a few black belts at this, right?

1515
01:10:53.160 --> 01:10:54.880
But this is a different story.

1516
01:10:54.880 --> 01:10:56.720
So if you take that same MO,

1517
01:10:56.720 --> 01:10:59.080
and you apply it to political violence,

1518
01:10:59.080 --> 01:11:01.760
now you have these other actors,

1519
01:11:01.760 --> 01:11:03.760
you have this other set of momentum.

1520
01:11:03.760 --> 01:11:07.000
You have Israel playing this big role.

1521
01:11:07.000 --> 01:11:09.480
You have the Iranians playing a big role.

1522
01:11:09.480 --> 01:11:12.240
You're suddenly now have more players

1523
01:11:12.240 --> 01:11:15.360
that can trap you in the chaos.

1524
01:11:15.360 --> 01:11:18.800
And this is, I think, what has happened.

1525
01:11:18.800 --> 01:11:20.440
Now with Venezuela,

1526
01:11:20.440 --> 01:11:23.720
he also went through the first stage of the trap,

1527
01:11:23.720 --> 01:11:25.960
and noticed that with Venezuela,

1528
01:11:25.960 --> 01:11:27.360
he just said, oh yeah,

1529
01:11:27.360 --> 01:11:29.480
we're just gonna forget about developing the oil.

1530
01:11:29.480 --> 01:11:31.160
No second stage, okay?

1531
01:11:31.160 --> 01:11:32.920
So with Venezuela,

1532
01:11:32.920 --> 01:11:35.440
there's a reason why that has paused.

1533
01:11:35.440 --> 01:11:38.080
It's because he didn't go to stage two,

1534
01:11:38.080 --> 01:11:39.760
because the oil company said,

1535
01:11:39.760 --> 01:11:42.440
we're not gonna die for you to build that oil.

1536
01:11:42.440 --> 01:11:45.680
So he is basically, he took out one person,

1537
01:11:45.680 --> 01:11:46.880
just literally one person,

1538
01:11:46.880 --> 01:11:48.760
that person's not even dead yet,

1539
01:11:48.760 --> 01:11:51.800
and he's not really developing any of those oil fields

1540
01:11:51.800 --> 01:11:52.640
in Venezuela.

1541
01:11:52.640 --> 01:11:54.120
They're just not being developed.

1542
01:11:54.120 --> 01:11:55.360
He said he has a good relationship

1543
01:11:55.360 --> 01:11:57.640
with the Venezuelan government now that,

1544
01:11:57.640 --> 01:11:59.960
as long as because he's not doing any,

1545
01:11:59.960 --> 01:12:01.360
the Venezuelan government,

1546
01:12:01.360 --> 01:12:02.480
he's leaving them in place.

1547
01:12:02.480 --> 01:12:06.320
He's basically declaring victory and moving on.

1548
01:12:06.320 --> 01:12:09.360
He removed Maduro, kept the others in,

1549
01:12:09.360 --> 01:12:11.440
and it sounds like the regime.

1550
01:12:11.440 --> 01:12:13.680
It sounds like that might have somewhat inspired

1551
01:12:13.680 --> 01:12:15.000
his move to bomb around,

1552
01:12:15.000 --> 01:12:17.320
because it appears on the surface,

1553
01:12:17.320 --> 01:12:19.400
that Venezuela kind of didn't go too badly.

1554
01:12:19.400 --> 01:12:22.240
Kind of was a political victory.

1555
01:12:22.240 --> 01:12:23.600
Chaos kid.

1556
01:12:23.600 --> 01:12:24.760
Chaos kid.

1557
01:12:24.760 --> 01:12:26.320
Snatched him out, that was his management.

1558
01:12:26.320 --> 01:12:27.760
But then he stopped.

1559
01:12:27.760 --> 01:12:29.040
So this would be,

1560
01:12:29.040 --> 01:12:31.640
the equivalent would be last June.

1561
01:12:31.680 --> 01:12:35.600
So last June, he went through stage one,

1562
01:12:35.600 --> 01:12:37.440
and he tried to stop.

1563
01:12:37.440 --> 01:12:39.360
What made the difference here?

1564
01:12:39.360 --> 01:12:40.400
It wasn't Trump.

1565
01:12:40.400 --> 01:12:42.840
It was the intel he got from Netanyahu,

1566
01:12:42.840 --> 01:12:45.080
the phone call from Netanyahu,

1567
01:12:45.080 --> 01:12:47.560
which is President Trump getting ready.

1568
01:12:47.560 --> 01:12:49.720
We're about to assassinate the Supreme Leader

1569
01:12:49.720 --> 01:12:52.880
in about 20 of his associates and other leaders here.

1570
01:12:52.880 --> 01:12:54.520
You decide how you wanna handle this,

1571
01:12:54.520 --> 01:12:56.160
but we're taking off.

1572
01:12:56.160 --> 01:13:01.160
And so that did not happen with the Maduro regime.

1573
01:13:01.560 --> 01:13:04.440
So just imagine that there was another country

1574
01:13:04.440 --> 01:13:06.880
that had after Trump took out Maduro,

1575
01:13:06.880 --> 01:13:10.120
decided they were gonna keep assassinating

1576
01:13:10.120 --> 01:13:12.920
the regime in Venezuela.

1577
01:13:12.920 --> 01:13:15.280
Now you would be in a different story.

1578
01:13:15.280 --> 01:13:17.880
You made a quite famous prediction, Professor.

1579
01:13:17.880 --> 01:13:20.400
You predicted in 2009 that America's era

1580
01:13:20.400 --> 01:13:23.000
as the world's only superpower was ending.

1581
01:13:23.000 --> 01:13:24.880
Oh yeah, and I think that is true.

1582
01:13:24.880 --> 01:13:26.200
We haven't talked about China,

1583
01:13:26.200 --> 01:13:29.200
but I believe that since Trump has come into office,

1584
01:13:29.200 --> 01:13:31.120
he's making China number one.

1585
01:13:31.160 --> 01:13:36.000
His tariffs have done nothing, but help China.

1586
01:13:36.000 --> 01:13:38.800
China's been on charm offensive

1587
01:13:38.800 --> 01:13:40.680
since the tariffs have been,

1588
01:13:40.680 --> 01:13:42.520
and they're picking up all the pieces.

1589
01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:45.560
I was just spent two weeks in China in June.

1590
01:13:45.560 --> 01:13:47.640
While we were bombing Iran,

1591
01:13:47.640 --> 01:13:50.240
I said I had to learn how to do social media.

1592
01:13:50.240 --> 01:13:55.240
I toured advanced industries in China for two solid weeks.

1593
01:13:56.080 --> 01:13:58.760
One of the most amazing visits,

1594
01:13:58.760 --> 01:14:01.040
trips I've ever had in my whole career.

1595
01:14:01.040 --> 01:14:03.040
And it was stunning.

1596
01:14:03.040 --> 01:14:05.240
So Stephen, since COVID,

1597
01:14:05.240 --> 01:14:08.600
almost nobody has gone to China.

1598
01:14:08.600 --> 01:14:11.680
Now if they have, they've gone to Beijing or Shanghai.

1599
01:14:11.680 --> 01:14:13.480
They haven't gone to Wuhan.

1600
01:14:13.480 --> 01:14:15.040
They haven't gone to San Chen's.

1601
01:14:15.040 --> 01:14:19.440
Visited the BYD electric car factories,

1602
01:14:19.440 --> 01:14:23.320
seeing the robots that are now doing the metallurgy.

1603
01:14:23.320 --> 01:14:25.200
And you can't see it very well on the web

1604
01:14:25.200 --> 01:14:27.680
because China's keeping it to themselves.

1605
01:14:27.680 --> 01:14:29.600
They don't wanna brag about it.

1606
01:14:30.320 --> 01:14:31.840
They're motoring ahead.

1607
01:14:31.840 --> 01:14:34.240
So Wuhan, to give you an example,

1608
01:14:34.240 --> 01:14:36.240
Wuhan is kind of like Pittsburgh.

1609
01:14:36.240 --> 01:14:37.800
It's a bigger version of Pittsburgh.

1610
01:14:37.800 --> 01:14:40.600
It's an old steel area.

1611
01:14:40.600 --> 01:14:42.360
That's not Wuhan today.

1612
01:14:42.360 --> 01:14:45.480
Wuhan today is the AI.

1613
01:14:45.480 --> 01:14:49.360
It's developing not just a robotic company.

1614
01:14:49.360 --> 01:14:54.200
They're uplifting nine million people in Wuhan.

1615
01:14:54.200 --> 01:14:56.960
Their medicine is improved.

1616
01:14:56.960 --> 01:14:59.480
Their infrastructure is improved.

1617
01:14:59.480 --> 01:15:03.120
They have more construction jobs than ever before

1618
01:15:03.120 --> 01:15:05.200
because they have to build so much

1619
01:15:05.200 --> 01:15:08.240
to uplift the whole nine million people.

1620
01:15:08.240 --> 01:15:12.280
This is what Pittsburgh should have been and hasn't been.

1621
01:15:12.280 --> 01:15:14.560
And I know I'm from Western Pennsylvania.

1622
01:15:14.560 --> 01:15:16.840
It's heartbreaking to me to watch what's happened

1623
01:15:16.840 --> 01:15:19.440
to Pittsburgh over the last 30 or 40 years.

1624
01:15:19.440 --> 01:15:22.160
Wuhan, exactly the same trajectory,

1625
01:15:22.160 --> 01:15:27.160
an old steel city is now one of the lead errors here

1626
01:15:27.320 --> 01:15:30.080
in they have a robotic Silicon Valley there

1627
01:15:30.080 --> 01:15:32.280
that I visited and so forth.

1628
01:15:32.280 --> 01:15:33.480
And what does this matter?

1629
01:15:33.480 --> 01:15:36.160
What is it matter if the US and no longer the world super power?

1630
01:15:36.160 --> 01:15:39.480
What then does history tell us is the consequence of that?

1631
01:15:39.480 --> 01:15:42.600
The consequence is, first of all,

1632
01:15:42.600 --> 01:15:47.040
you get enormous tension here for violence.

1633
01:15:47.040 --> 01:15:51.040
So when you see big hegemonic shifts.

1634
01:15:51.040 --> 01:15:51.880
Hegemonic.

1635
01:15:51.880 --> 01:15:55.120
That means when one leader, the world's number one

1636
01:15:55.120 --> 01:15:58.480
becomes replaced by another.

1637
01:15:58.480 --> 01:15:59.840
Bad things happen.

1638
01:15:59.840 --> 01:16:02.760
This is what happened, how you got the wars between Britain

1639
01:16:02.760 --> 01:16:05.520
and France, when they were fighting their wars.

1640
01:16:05.520 --> 01:16:08.480
This is how you got essentially World War One

1641
01:16:08.480 --> 01:16:11.680
because of the rise and fall of Germany

1642
01:16:11.680 --> 01:16:15.200
versus Russia versus Britain.

1643
01:16:15.200 --> 01:16:18.800
So these rising and fall, they make a huge difference.

1644
01:16:18.800 --> 01:16:20.160
Doesn't always happen.

1645
01:16:20.160 --> 01:16:23.040
The one time it was peaceful was when America

1646
01:16:23.040 --> 01:16:25.520
replaced Britain as number one.

1647
01:16:25.520 --> 01:16:26.760
So just think about that.

1648
01:16:26.760 --> 01:16:29.240
But other times it's been very tense.

1649
01:16:29.240 --> 01:16:32.680
So how does trying to feel that the US and now at war

1650
01:16:32.680 --> 01:16:33.800
would the Middle East?

1651
01:16:33.800 --> 01:16:36.840
So what's interesting is to get ready for coming on here,

1652
01:16:36.840 --> 01:16:38.560
I listen to the all-in podcast

1653
01:16:38.560 --> 01:16:40.120
and I hope that's okay to talk about it.

1654
01:16:40.120 --> 01:16:43.400
I think they're brilliant, by the way, I love it.

1655
01:16:43.400 --> 01:16:45.760
But what they said, just in the most recent,

1656
01:16:45.760 --> 01:16:48.080
is that Trump's playing a game for China.

1657
01:16:48.080 --> 01:16:50.760
What they said is China shaking in its boots

1658
01:16:50.760 --> 01:16:54.400
and that what this is about is it's kind of Venezuela

1659
01:16:54.400 --> 01:16:57.680
plus Iran is all about to cause she to be shaking

1660
01:16:57.680 --> 01:17:01.280
in its boots in April so that he will somehow

1661
01:17:01.280 --> 01:17:03.120
make some bigger deal with Trump.

1662
01:17:03.120 --> 01:17:04.320
I think this is just wrong.

1663
01:17:04.320 --> 01:17:09.320
I think that it may be that China does absolutely

1664
01:17:10.000 --> 01:17:12.120
by 90% of Iran's oil.

1665
01:17:12.120 --> 01:17:15.120
We're not disagreeing with the facts of the matter.

1666
01:17:15.120 --> 01:17:18.240
It's the interpretation and the consequences

1667
01:17:18.280 --> 01:17:21.000
for who's going to be number one down the road.

1668
01:17:21.000 --> 01:17:26.000
So my assessment here is China is probably thrilled

1669
01:17:27.360 --> 01:17:30.880
that we're on the verge of getting into another quagmire

1670
01:17:30.880 --> 01:17:34.760
in the Middle East and that they would gladly give up.

1671
01:17:34.760 --> 01:17:38.080
They have about 20% of their GDP that turn energy,

1672
01:17:38.080 --> 01:17:40.160
not GDP, 20% of their energy,

1673
01:17:40.160 --> 01:17:42.000
it's a much smaller fraction of their GDP

1674
01:17:42.000 --> 01:17:44.240
that turns on the oil issue.

1675
01:17:44.240 --> 01:17:47.720
Most of their energy is not generated through oil.

1676
01:17:47.720 --> 01:17:49.800
And so I think they would really,

1677
01:17:49.800 --> 01:17:52.120
if they had to give all of the Middle Eastern oil up

1678
01:17:52.120 --> 01:17:56.440
to suck us in to another forever war with Iran

1679
01:17:56.440 --> 01:17:58.640
that would go on for years and years,

1680
01:17:58.640 --> 01:18:00.160
oh my goodness gracious,

1681
01:18:00.160 --> 01:18:05.160
cause they see themselves as growing through Asia

1682
01:18:05.320 --> 01:18:08.400
and spreading their wings through Asia.

1683
01:18:08.400 --> 01:18:12.520
And so to get us pinned down in the Middle East

1684
01:18:12.520 --> 01:18:16.360
with an even bigger problem than we had with Iraq,

1685
01:18:16.360 --> 01:18:18.440
this is mana from heaven from China.

1686
01:18:18.440 --> 01:18:19.640
And that's what I, they told,

1687
01:18:19.640 --> 01:18:21.160
that's what I saw when I was there.

1688
01:18:21.160 --> 01:18:23.240
If I was Putin or if I was running China,

1689
01:18:23.240 --> 01:18:25.440
based on everything you've said and based on everything I know,

1690
01:18:25.440 --> 01:18:28.160
I would really want this war to go on for a long time.

1691
01:18:28.160 --> 01:18:29.160
Oh, for sure.

1692
01:18:29.160 --> 01:18:31.720
I'd really, so I'd really be helping Iran,

1693
01:18:31.720 --> 01:18:33.440
you know, prolong this thing.

1694
01:18:33.440 --> 01:18:35.720
And also because Russia and their own situation

1695
01:18:35.720 --> 01:18:37.320
at the moment with Ukraine,

1696
01:18:37.320 --> 01:18:39.880
so it's quite a distraction

1697
01:18:39.880 --> 01:18:42.040
from whatever Putin's objectives are in Ukraine.

1698
01:18:42.040 --> 01:18:44.080
No one's really talking about Ukraine this week.

1699
01:18:44.080 --> 01:18:45.600
And it's bad for the Ukrainians

1700
01:18:45.640 --> 01:18:49.160
because what's happening is by the little bit

1701
01:18:49.160 --> 01:18:52.000
that Putin has gotten himself involved here,

1702
01:18:52.000 --> 01:18:55.040
there is a chance he set the stage for a deal,

1703
01:18:55.040 --> 01:18:58.280
which is again, America stops the intel to the Ukrainians

1704
01:18:58.280 --> 01:19:00.880
or Russia will stop the intel to Iran.

1705
01:19:00.880 --> 01:19:05.120
That is much, much, much to Putin's advantage with Ukraine.

1706
01:19:05.120 --> 01:19:07.920
So I think that you have a situation here, Stephen,

1707
01:19:07.920 --> 01:19:10.200
where Putin, it's not so much he's,

1708
01:19:10.200 --> 01:19:11.960
he's itching to get in the fight,

1709
01:19:11.960 --> 01:19:13.960
is he's trying to do it in ways

1710
01:19:13.960 --> 01:19:15.720
if he gets something out of it

1711
01:19:15.720 --> 01:19:19.120
in his relations war with Ukraine.

1712
01:19:19.120 --> 01:19:20.640
Think about that with President Xi.

1713
01:19:20.640 --> 01:19:23.880
I don't think the Chinese want to get in the fight.

1714
01:19:23.880 --> 01:19:25.680
I think in fact, right now,

1715
01:19:25.680 --> 01:19:28.440
if I'm assessing this correctly,

1716
01:19:28.440 --> 01:19:30.200
they're probably not wanting to get in the way

1717
01:19:30.200 --> 01:19:32.880
of an enemy who's shooting himself in both feet.

1718
01:19:32.880 --> 01:19:35.920
So right now, America's damaging itself

1719
01:19:35.920 --> 01:19:37.800
a lot more than China could.

1720
01:19:37.800 --> 01:19:40.040
And if China inserts itself,

1721
01:19:40.040 --> 01:19:42.760
there's a very good chance then that would help Trump.

1722
01:19:42.760 --> 01:19:44.720
Again, pull a rabbit out of a hat.

1723
01:19:44.720 --> 01:19:46.120
I don't think they want to do that.

1724
01:19:46.120 --> 01:19:48.760
I think right now, you just look at this from,

1725
01:19:48.760 --> 01:19:51.240
we're running out of what's called standoff PGM.

1726
01:19:51.240 --> 01:19:52.720
Remember Secretary Higgs has said,

1727
01:19:52.720 --> 01:19:55.680
well, yeah, okay, we're running out of standoff PGM.

1728
01:19:55.680 --> 01:19:57.520
It's what we're gonna do something from the it,

1729
01:19:57.520 --> 01:20:01.120
from the the bombs that we can drop more over country.

1730
01:20:01.120 --> 01:20:04.200
Well, that's the problem for a problem for Taiwan.

1731
01:20:04.200 --> 01:20:06.080
If we're gonna defend Taiwan,

1732
01:20:06.080 --> 01:20:10.480
we've got to do this with long standoff precision weapons.

1733
01:20:10.480 --> 01:20:13.600
And we all, everybody who studies this knows that.

1734
01:20:13.600 --> 01:20:15.920
So if we're really running well

1735
01:20:15.920 --> 01:20:18.560
on standoff precision weapons,

1736
01:20:18.560 --> 01:20:20.280
she's just lickin' his chops,

1737
01:20:20.280 --> 01:20:22.960
saying, my goodness, how much better does this get?

1738
01:20:24.400 --> 01:20:28.240
If Trump was listening, probably in the case,

1739
01:20:28.240 --> 01:20:31.440
I think he just watches CNN and Fox News.

1740
01:20:31.440 --> 01:20:33.440
But if Trump was listening, what would you say to him?

1741
01:20:33.440 --> 01:20:34.960
What I would tell him is take the deal.

1742
01:20:34.960 --> 01:20:38.200
I would say stop right now and do everything possible

1743
01:20:38.200 --> 01:20:41.000
to go back to the deal you rejected the day

1744
01:20:41.000 --> 01:20:42.400
before you started bombing.

1745
01:20:42.400 --> 01:20:46.520
And what your goal should be is to get as much

1746
01:20:46.520 --> 01:20:51.040
of the 60% enriched uranium out of the country as possible.

1747
01:20:51.040 --> 01:20:54.680
If you could also get the 20% enriched uranium out,

1748
01:20:54.680 --> 01:20:56.400
that would be good too.

1749
01:20:56.400 --> 01:20:59.400
But you're probably not gonna get as good a deal

1750
01:20:59.400 --> 01:21:02.320
because the supreme leader you were dealing with is gone.

1751
01:21:02.320 --> 01:21:04.120
And you now have a much tougher,

1752
01:21:04.120 --> 01:21:07.560
so you might have to accept President Trump a worse deal.

1753
01:21:07.560 --> 01:21:09.360
Are we just kicking the can down the road here?

1754
01:21:09.360 --> 01:21:11.160
Because if you're an Iranian, like you've said,

1755
01:21:11.160 --> 01:21:13.360
you've watched bombs drop, you've realized

1756
01:21:13.360 --> 01:21:15.680
that the reason why you are such a target

1757
01:21:15.680 --> 01:21:17.200
is because you don't have these nuclear weapons.

1758
01:21:17.200 --> 01:21:20.360
So is there not an element where around getting

1759
01:21:20.360 --> 01:21:23.360
nuclear weapons is inevitable in some way?

1760
01:21:23.360 --> 01:21:27.040
So Steven, this is the myth of 100% security.

1761
01:21:27.040 --> 01:21:29.600
So we see this in not just America,

1762
01:21:29.600 --> 01:21:32.040
but in lots of conflicts in history,

1763
01:21:32.040 --> 01:21:36.280
where the idea that you don't have 100% security

1764
01:21:36.280 --> 01:21:38.920
leads you to essentially do things

1765
01:21:38.920 --> 01:21:41.360
that look like suicide for fear of death.

1766
01:21:41.360 --> 01:21:46.200
So we know that there is a long-term problem out there

1767
01:21:46.200 --> 01:21:49.360
and sometimes a really good solution

1768
01:21:49.360 --> 01:21:51.680
is to freeze it for 20 years.

1769
01:21:51.680 --> 01:21:53.320
Just freeze it for 20 years.

1770
01:21:53.320 --> 01:21:55.000
And you know what, you're right.

1771
01:21:55.000 --> 01:21:57.680
You didn't permanently take it off the table,

1772
01:21:57.680 --> 01:22:00.240
but if you could freeze a problem for 20 years,

1773
01:22:00.240 --> 01:22:03.760
that's actually a lot of, you might get lucky.

1774
01:22:03.760 --> 01:22:06.160
You might get something good like the Soviet Union

1775
01:22:06.160 --> 01:22:08.000
might just fall apart on you, you know,

1776
01:22:08.000 --> 01:22:10.360
out of the blue if I just fall apart on you.

1777
01:22:10.360 --> 01:22:11.960
And not because you did anything,

1778
01:22:11.960 --> 01:22:14.440
it's just because something else changed in the world.

1779
01:22:14.440 --> 01:22:16.600
So the way to think about this, Steven,

1780
01:22:16.600 --> 01:22:19.520
is not this idea that we're gonna take an action

1781
01:22:19.520 --> 01:22:22.120
and have 100% security.

1782
01:22:22.120 --> 01:22:25.840
This is how big powers lose wars.

1783
01:22:25.840 --> 01:22:29.640
Big powers are up against these little countries

1784
01:22:29.640 --> 01:22:32.280
and think about how often they lose.

1785
01:22:32.280 --> 01:22:34.280
We lose to Vietnam.

1786
01:22:34.280 --> 01:22:36.680
That's how I got into this business in the first place.

1787
01:22:36.680 --> 01:22:38.520
I wanted to understand that.

1788
01:22:38.520 --> 01:22:41.800
And so this idea of the search for perfect security

1789
01:22:41.800 --> 01:22:44.600
is often getting us into trouble.

1790
01:22:44.600 --> 01:22:46.640
Kick a can down, you're right.

1791
01:22:46.640 --> 01:22:48.240
It's only 20 years.

1792
01:22:48.240 --> 01:22:49.280
I'll take that.

1793
01:22:49.280 --> 01:22:51.480
That's better than where we are right now.

1794
01:22:51.480 --> 01:22:54.520
Professor Robert Pape of all the things

1795
01:22:54.520 --> 01:22:56.400
that we've talked about,

1796
01:22:58.080 --> 01:23:00.360
which has been a wonderful conversation, by the way.

1797
01:23:00.360 --> 01:23:01.240
And very diverse.

1798
01:23:01.240 --> 01:23:02.680
But really focused on this subject

1799
01:23:02.680 --> 01:23:03.800
of what's going on in the world at the moment

1800
01:23:03.800 --> 01:23:06.320
with Iran and Trump and America as divine.

1801
01:23:06.320 --> 01:23:07.840
What is the thing that we should have talked about

1802
01:23:07.840 --> 01:23:09.760
that we didn't talk about?

1803
01:23:09.760 --> 01:23:11.080
The big thing,

1804
01:23:11.080 --> 01:23:13.680
well, we're finally getting to it at the end

1805
01:23:13.680 --> 01:23:18.320
is the real consequence of what President Trump has done

1806
01:23:18.320 --> 01:23:20.600
since coming into office.

1807
01:23:20.600 --> 01:23:23.160
The real consequence of the tariffs,

1808
01:23:23.160 --> 01:23:26.640
the real consequence of not just threatening

1809
01:23:26.640 --> 01:23:28.880
a discussion of Greenland,

1810
01:23:29.400 --> 01:23:30.800
but becoming very aggressive

1811
01:23:30.800 --> 01:23:33.000
with our European allies on Greenland,

1812
01:23:33.000 --> 01:23:35.280
being very aggressive to the point of

1813
01:23:36.640 --> 01:23:38.640
a taking out a leader from Venezuela,

1814
01:23:38.640 --> 01:23:40.640
which is in our Western hemisphere,

1815
01:23:40.640 --> 01:23:44.320
so it's creating what this is really doing

1816
01:23:44.320 --> 01:23:46.920
is it's threatening America's primacy.

1817
01:23:46.920 --> 01:23:50.040
So I am a big believer that America

1818
01:23:50.040 --> 01:23:53.680
should be the strongest, most secure state on the planet.

1819
01:23:53.680 --> 01:23:56.960
I think that is good for us.

1820
01:23:57.000 --> 01:24:01.320
That means that it is valuable to be the top dog,

1821
01:24:01.320 --> 01:24:05.320
to be the number one strongest economic military power.

1822
01:24:05.320 --> 01:24:06.800
But in order to do that,

1823
01:24:06.800 --> 01:24:10.800
you have to be the world's number one economy for real.

1824
01:24:10.800 --> 01:24:13.200
And with $40 trillion in debt,

1825
01:24:14.200 --> 01:24:17.880
with us pushing away our trading partners,

1826
01:24:17.880 --> 01:24:22.360
with us engaging in hostile actions here,

1827
01:24:22.360 --> 01:24:24.520
which are scaring the rest of the world

1828
01:24:24.520 --> 01:24:27.120
to further drift away from us

1829
01:24:27.120 --> 01:24:30.360
and maybe not side with China, but be neutral.

1830
01:24:30.360 --> 01:24:31.720
Oh my goodness gracious.

1831
01:24:31.720 --> 01:24:33.840
And again, as I said before,

1832
01:24:33.840 --> 01:24:38.000
China is motoring ahead on the AI revolution.

1833
01:24:38.000 --> 01:24:42.560
We're talking AI, but are we really doing Wuhan?

1834
01:24:42.560 --> 01:24:43.880
Are we up to Wuhan?

1835
01:24:43.880 --> 01:24:48.880
I think it would be interesting for folks to go to Wuhan

1836
01:24:49.280 --> 01:24:53.560
and actually visit or go to San Chen and visit

1837
01:24:53.560 --> 01:24:58.000
or go to Hangzhou and visit and see where Alibaba is

1838
01:24:58.000 --> 01:25:02.280
and see that it's not just one company here,

1839
01:25:02.280 --> 01:25:03.600
it's not just deep sea,

1840
01:25:03.600 --> 01:25:07.480
that there's clusters that are being built,

1841
01:25:07.480 --> 01:25:11.600
that are uplifting 10 million people with a swath.

1842
01:25:11.600 --> 01:25:14.480
And my goodness, why aren't we doing that in America?

1843
01:25:14.480 --> 01:25:16.280
We certainly need that in the rest of it.

1844
01:25:16.280 --> 01:25:17.200
We're too distracted.

1845
01:25:17.200 --> 01:25:20.360
We're too distracted, which is what I'm trying to say

1846
01:25:20.360 --> 01:25:22.440
is to China's advantage.

1847
01:25:22.440 --> 01:25:27.000
And I think this is the real long-term price,

1848
01:25:27.000 --> 01:25:32.040
which is, are we actually eroding our position

1849
01:25:32.040 --> 01:25:34.520
as the world's number one?

1850
01:25:34.520 --> 01:25:38.040
And I think our primacy is in danger.

1851
01:25:38.040 --> 01:25:40.280
Professor Robert Pape, we have a closing tradition

1852
01:25:40.280 --> 01:25:41.840
on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question

1853
01:25:41.840 --> 01:25:44.920
for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.

1854
01:25:44.920 --> 01:25:48.840
Ah, the question left for you is,

1855
01:25:48.840 --> 01:25:51.080
what is the prediction you have for the future

1856
01:25:51.080 --> 01:25:53.320
that most people do not want to hear?

1857
01:25:56.160 --> 01:25:59.120
Well, this is going to lead into the conversation.

1858
01:25:59.120 --> 01:26:00.880
So I have a book coming out in September

1859
01:26:00.880 --> 01:26:03.200
called Our Own Worst Enemies.

1860
01:26:03.200 --> 01:26:08.360
As bad as all this problem is, Steven, as bad as it is,

1861
01:26:08.360 --> 01:26:12.000
I have spent the last several years focusing on

1862
01:26:12.000 --> 01:26:14.680
what's happening with political violence

1863
01:26:14.680 --> 01:26:18.120
in the United States and its normalization.

1864
01:26:18.200 --> 01:26:24.960
And the biggest danger that we face, even bigger than Iran,

1865
01:26:24.960 --> 01:26:27.720
and all the problems we've just talked about,

1866
01:26:27.720 --> 01:26:30.480
is the normalization of political violence

1867
01:26:30.480 --> 01:26:31.400
in our own country.

1868
01:26:31.400 --> 01:26:33.080
And by political violence, you mean?

1869
01:26:33.080 --> 01:26:37.080
I'm talking about, in the last 10 years,

1870
01:26:37.080 --> 01:26:42.320
we have seen a surge of violent riots.

1871
01:26:42.320 --> 01:26:46.400
We have seen a surge of political assassinations

1872
01:26:46.400 --> 01:26:48.960
that we haven't seen since the 1960s.

1873
01:26:48.960 --> 01:26:52.680
On top of that, we've just had Operation Midway Blitz

1874
01:26:52.680 --> 01:26:54.200
in my city, Chicago.

1875
01:26:54.200 --> 01:26:59.200
That is the surge of militarized immigration enforcement,

1876
01:27:01.000 --> 01:27:05.760
which surged ice, which surged into neighborhoods

1877
01:27:05.760 --> 01:27:10.240
over almost 300 times, not just a small,

1878
01:27:10.240 --> 01:27:15.000
and then what happened after they left Chicago,

1879
01:27:15.000 --> 01:27:19.720
is they did even more of that in Minneapolis.

1880
01:27:19.720 --> 01:27:24.720
So these, this trajectory, Steven, that we're on,

1881
01:27:24.800 --> 01:27:28.760
where we are seeing the incredible normalization

1882
01:27:28.760 --> 01:27:31.400
of political violence, and it's happening on both the right

1883
01:27:31.400 --> 01:27:32.400
and the left.

1884
01:27:32.400 --> 01:27:33.920
I'm not trying to make moral equivalents,

1885
01:27:33.920 --> 01:27:36.800
but it is, and the book will explain this,

1886
01:27:36.800 --> 01:27:40.360
is probably the greatest danger that we face,

1887
01:27:40.360 --> 01:27:45.000
because if we are our own worst enemies,

1888
01:27:45.000 --> 01:27:50.200
think of what that means for us being that great power

1889
01:27:50.200 --> 01:27:52.200
that is so important for us,

1890
01:27:52.200 --> 01:27:54.480
and the great future we want for our families

1891
01:27:54.480 --> 01:27:57.080
and our communities here,

1892
01:27:57.080 --> 01:28:00.840
we are in danger of becoming our own worst enemies,

1893
01:28:00.840 --> 01:28:04.240
not for a day, not for a month, but for years.

1894
01:28:05.240 --> 01:28:06.920
Professor, thank you so much.

1895
01:28:06.920 --> 01:28:08.840
If anyone wants to go and read more

1896
01:28:08.840 --> 01:28:10.240
about many of the things we've talked about today,

1897
01:28:10.240 --> 01:28:11.240
where do they go?

1898
01:28:11.240 --> 01:28:12.240
Substack?

1899
01:28:12.240 --> 01:28:14.320
I would go, you read my books on it,

1900
01:28:14.320 --> 01:28:15.720
you can get them from Amazon.

1901
01:28:15.720 --> 01:28:17.920
I would go to Substack, and then,

1902
01:28:17.920 --> 01:28:20.000
and that's the escalation trap,

1903
01:28:20.000 --> 01:28:23.480
and I would also just be aware that there will be

1904
01:28:23.480 --> 01:28:24.880
more discussion of political violence,

1905
01:28:24.880 --> 01:28:27.200
so it's not just political violence abroad,

1906
01:28:27.200 --> 01:28:28.880
and it's not just political violence at home.

1907
01:28:28.880 --> 01:28:32.320
It is both happening at the same time.

1908
01:28:32.320 --> 01:28:33.440
Professor, thank you so much.

1909
01:28:33.440 --> 01:28:34.280
Thank you very much.

1910
01:28:34.280 --> 01:28:35.760
Really, really enjoyed it.

1911
01:28:35.760 --> 01:28:36.760
Thank you so much.

1912
01:28:36.760 --> 01:28:37.760
It was fantastic.