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These conversations aren't always easy, but nonetheless they are important.

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So every single year, Professor Ian Brammer, who's one of the world's leading political scientists,

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produces this risk report. And it highlights the top 10 biggest risks that everybody should be

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thinking about. And today, he's going to talk to me about the three that matter the most.

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So he predicts that a US political revolution is on its way.

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The US has become the biggest driver of geopolitical uncertainty in the world.

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And in my view, Trump will fail. And he also says that the other thing everybody needs to be

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talking about and aware of is what's really playing out with AI behind the scenes.

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They created a model which is so powerful that they couldn't release it because it would have been

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an immediate systemic risk to the global economy in our security. And artificial intelligence

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is eating it's useless. And we can talk about that. And lastly, I want to end on a point

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of optimism. Can we take this craziness and turn it into a utopia with realistic solutions?

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In Bremer, what is this document that I have in front of me here? This is our top risk report.

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We put it out at the beginning of every year. Try to help people around the world understand

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the risk environment globally. So for the last 30 years, your phone has been

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trying to understand the world to help make better decisions based on the big picture of what's

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happening geopolitically. And every year your phone releases this top risk report. The

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2026 one appears to be pretty prophetic because a lot of things that you list as the top risks are

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playing out before our eyes. For anyone that hasn't read this report, what are the most important

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subjects? You wrote this in January. We're now sat here in April. What are the most important

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subjects of the top 10 risks that you think we should talk about today? I think that there are

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three that are really big. The first is that the United States has become the biggest driver of

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risk, the biggest driver of geopolitical uncertainty in the world. And we see that with the tariffs,

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we see that with Venezuela, we see with Greenland, we see it with Iran. I mean, if there was that

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level of uncertainty in a smaller political system and that happens all the time, we wouldn't

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care as much because the global impact would not matter. But everyone out there is affected by even

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small changes in the United States. Suddenly, big changes in the United States. The Americans are

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saying we no longer want to play by the rules that we set up historically. We don't want the free

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trade system that we put together. We don't want to be the global policeman that is paying for

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the collective security. We don't want the open borders that used to welcome so many people

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from around the world. We want a very different set of rules. The American system is not being

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challenged by the Chinese saying we don't want. The Americans themselves and the leadership are saying

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we refuse to be the leader that we used to be. So that's number one. Yeah. That is number one.

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This is a critical risk. That is a critical risk. But that's the most important without any question.

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And again, I say critical in terms of it is happening right now. It is overwhelmingly likely.

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It's over determined and the impact is massive. So there's no way you could look at the geopolitical

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order today and not say this is the most important thing that is not just driving headlines,

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but that's creating real movement in how the global economy works, how global politics works,

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global security, everything is driven by this change. What's the second one? The second one is

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the big question of how the second most powerful country in the world is responding to all of that.

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Now, we in the top risks piece talked about overpowered, overpowered being the global energy dynamic.

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How China has been working to build the most effective electric vehicles all over the world at

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scale and the batteries all over the world at scale and the critical minerals and rare rates for

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decades now, not just having access so they can exploit them, but also so that they can reprocess

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them. For anyone that doesn't know what critical minerals are. Yeah. And how important they are to

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everyday lives. Could you give us some color there? Sure. We're talking about all of these things

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that you take out of the ground, whether it's lithium, antimony, which is in all these devices.

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In every device in your car battery, it's in your missile systems and your advanced weaponry that

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keeps you safe at home or allows you to go to war against somebody. I mean, you can't have an

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advanced economy without critical minerals and rare rates. And the Chinese have been investing

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at scale globally in that capability for decades now, thinking long term. And a lot of the rest of

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us have not been thinking long term. We're like just in time, globalization, how do we make the most

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money now for our next quarterly return? And that reality is making China not a better economy

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today, but it's setting them up for a much stronger long term trajectory. So as a risk,

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you're going to ask me to do this. It is not as critical as the US political revolution,

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because this is focusing on 2026. And China is playing out over a longer period of time,

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but it is absolutely severe because the Chinese understand that long term as countries are saying

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the Americans are less predictable. And we're more vulnerable to their sudden changes in decisions.

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Many more countries are saying, well, we want to hedge and do more with the Chinese. And those

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decisions really matter. If this continues, if this direction of travel continues, what happens next

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in terms of global order, in terms of the Middle East, in terms of all of these things we've talked

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about, Trump will fail. And I think that the level of policy in competence and unwillingness to

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take on expertise is ensuring that it will fail. He's quite unpopular on so many issues right now.

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He's going to lose in a big way in the midterms coming up in November. And that will make him look

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like a lame duck. And Republicans will start to think about their own futures as opposed to

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holding on to this 80 year old guy. Having said that, we will not have resolved these underlying

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challenges for average Americans. So there will still be a demand for a political revolution in

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the United States. The question will be, will the next person that comes and captures that?

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Are they going to be focused on themselves or focused on the country?

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Trump actually identified the symptoms and was able to benefit as a political entrepreneur twice

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from getting elected in free and fair elections, right? Mostly the reality is a future person.

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We're in New York right now. Zoraan Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is the mayor of New York City,

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which is like the capital of global capitalism and finance in the world. What does that tell you?

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That tells you that there's still a demand for something very different. And we don't know,

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as it could come from the left or the right, but we know that that level of uncertainty is growing.

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And it's not just growing in the United States. It's growing in the global order because if the

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Americans are no longer willing to act as the global leader, but no one else is capable of filling

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those shoes, you don't have a G7 or a G20 where governments come together and agree on the rules

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of the road. You have a G0, an absence of global leadership where people, the powerful, make the

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rules that are useful to them and the weak have to accept that, have to find a way to live under

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that. That's where we're headed. There was a Yale poll in April, 2026 that said Kamala Harris is

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leading the overall democratic field with 20%, narrowly edging out Gavin Newsom at 19% and Pete

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Buttigieg at 14% with AOC at 13%. Means literally nothing to me. You know, I think it was Jim

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Carville, the great democratic political strategist that was talking about November. He said,

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you know, the Democrats need to do. They need to all get on a plane and go to Turks and K-Cost

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until after the election. Say nothing, be absent. Just do not be and allow. It's like the sun's

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zoo. It's like when your opponent is making mistakes, stay out of their way. When you say the

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election, do you mean the mid-term election? Mid-term election. Yeah. Yeah. So for now, there's nothing

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happening except Trump and the reaction to Trump. Then after that, we have a two-year-long

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God, God help us. Election in the United States, billions of dollars will be spent and people will

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have far too much information about far too many of these people. Then we can have a conversation.

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It is too early to talk about 2028 right now. I have to ask you then, what on earth is going on?

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I wonder when we're going to get that. We got this big map in front of us here. We haven't even

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touched the Middle East. We literally haven't touched it. What is going on? Really take me back

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to the beginning. What did Trump think was going to happen? How is this linked to Venezuela?

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Yeah. Why would he do this after saying that he was the president that was going to stop all the wars?

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What is the big picture here? And literally one of the eight wars that he said that he had stopped

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was with Iran. This was not what he was voted, you know. He was voted and he ended the war in

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Afghanistan. I mean, he cut the deal with the Taliban. Was it a great deal? Yeah. For the Taliban,

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it was pretty good. But it got the Americans out 20 years, a trillion dollars.

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Fought on the backs of the Afghan people and of Americans, not wealthy Americans. Not people

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like Trump that could find a way out of service, but poor Americans. And Europeans. Yeah. And Europeans

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who fought side by side with the Americans when the Americans asked them to almost all of them

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sending troops and many of them wounded and dying in the same numbers, the same percentages,

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just as courageous as the Americans were. Right. So Americans wanted an end to that. Vietnam,

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Iraq, Afghanistan. What the hell are you guys doing? We're not benefiting that. Stop it. Trump stopped

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it. So why do you do this? Why did he do this? I think there are three reasons why he did it. I'll

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take you through it. First reason, you said Venezuela, not on this map, shouldn't be relevant to

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this map. Turns out it's relevant to this map. Trump had plans to take out Maduro. He's got a lot of

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people inside his administration that see this guy as a real problem. And by the way, a problem for

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the region, 8 million Venezuelan refugees destabilizing the region, lots of drug export destabilizing

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the region. So he had been planning to do something was also linked to oil. It was relevant.

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They have the world's largest oil reserves. It is going to take far more years than Trump will

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be in office to make that meaningful. So it sounds good from a branding perspective. And you're

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going to see a few hundred thousand more barrels a day. But it's it's going to be years. If you saw

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that testimony by the CEO of Exxon mobile, who said, you know, Venezuela is not investible today.

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And Trump was angry at him. And all the other energy CEOs, like thank you for saying that,

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we're not saying anything like him. Look at him. Look at him. Look at him. Not much courage

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among those CEOs publicly. So the oil is a great headline for Trump. It doesn't matter much

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for Trump's presidency. As we know, just to get some color on that, it's not because they just

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can't they have to build up lots of infrastructure to be able to extract it. Oh, yeah. And because

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all their engineers have gone, most of them in the oil patch up in Canada, which has similar

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geology to it because they've destroyed so much of their infrastructure. It's broken down

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because the governance structure isn't there yet. They don't have people that are capable of

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actually ensuring that there will be contracts that you would follow through on engaging.

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People that still have the huge lawsuits that need to be resolved, right? So all of this stuff.

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But to get to your, I don't want to lose sight of your why did Trump do this in Iran? So the first

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point is beginning of the year, Trump goes in to Venezuela, right? It is the most successful

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military operation you can possibly imagine. Not a single American serviceman or woman is killed.

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They go in, they take Maduro out. They don't kill them. They don't injure them. They bring them

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to a jail in Brooklyn right here in New York out of Burrow, but still counts New York City,

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right? Extraordinary. And he's facing justice. And meanwhile, Delcy Rodriguez, right? Suddenly,

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Vice President becomes acting president. It's like, sir, we want to work with you guys. We don't

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want any of that, right? And so you've got a new government that has a different trajectory,

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but it's basically the same regime. And they say, whatever you want, we will work on. We'll open

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our oil sector. We'll open our mining sector. We'll have better regs. We'll try to improve the

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economy for the average Venezuelan. I mean, they're starting to become popular. In another year,

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if they had elections in Venezuela, it is not inconceivable that she would win in a democratic

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election, which is like blows your mind, right? Hold but hundreds of political prisoners. They have

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released. I talked to leaders all over South America. They all think this was a success. This is

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enormously popular among the populations in those countries because they care about security.

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That's what they've been voting on. Their elections have been about the economy and local security

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and Venezuela has been a problem for them, right? I mean, they're exporting people,

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causing crime, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, this Chile, right? This has been a serious issue. Trump

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Trump is hugely feeling great, successful. And I was like, I can do that in Iran. I can do it even

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big. That's the first reason. I said three reasons. That's the first reason. Second reason.

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This is not Trump's first rodeo with the Iranians. In his first presidency, the Iranians were

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engaging in strikes against the Americans directly and with proxies, bases in Iraq, other places.

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Also, we're taking on strikes against the biggest refinery in the world in Saudi Arabia,

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those drone strikes you may remember. The Saudis and the Emirates were telling the Americans,

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we need to do something. We need to take some action. Trump didn't want to do anything. They'll

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get angry, right? Finally, the end of his presidency, he orders pretty bold move. The assassination

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of this incredibly charismatic military leader, Kasim Soleimani, the head of the Kud's force,

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as it was called, in Iran. In Iran, was so angry. And they were going to destroy the United

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States. Death to America. What do they actually do? Nothing. And then last June, Iranians are

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developing their ballistic missiles. They're developing their nuclear enrichment. In radiant enrichment,

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they're like stockpiling at higher level 60% and the Israelis want to go in. Trump's providing

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intelligence. He doesn't want to go. Kind of dangerous. The Israelis go in. It's enormously popular.

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It's going well. Succeeding. Trump's like, I want a part of that. That's successful. So he

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joins in. Second time, Israel took casualties by 100 killed, I think, in the course of that 12-day

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war. The United States, Iran talked big, did not hit the Americans. They threw some missiles at

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that al-Adaid base in Qatar, the biggest US base. They warned the Americans through Iraq before

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the missiles were launched. So it was very clear the Iranians didn't want any part of that fight.

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So Trump is thinking to himself, this is going to be awesome. Because I'm going to go in,

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I'm going to pull Venezuela in Iran. I know they don't want to fight me. I killed the supreme

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leader 86 years old. It's going to die anyway. He's not that popular among the Iranian,

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of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the IRGC, because they're the ones that really run the

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country. I'm going to have this huge military force that shows what I'm capable of doing.

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Then the rest of the Iranian leadership, they're going to want to work with me, just like they

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did in Venezuela. That was reason number two. Then the most important reason.

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Most important reason is that unlike Trump's first term, where he had people around him,

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that were patriotic first and foremost to the country. When they had disagreements with Trump,

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they let him know. They leaked. They also were willing occasionally to do what they could to

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undermine an incompetent decision that would hurt the country. We saw that whether it was with

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Mike Pompeo or Mad Dogmatis, all of these people who were much more independent, strong actors.

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This time around, Trump has some really good advisors, people like Marco Rubio and Scott Besson.

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He also has some staggeringly incompetent advisors, like Pete Higgseth, for example.

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What they all share is that they are first and foremost loyal to the president,

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and they will not tell him. They won't push back. What he hears from them is shaded towards

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how brilliant he is. That makes him think that he will be more successful, even when

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the military thinks this is a horrible idea. We just saw this with the reporting from the head

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of the joint chiefs, Dan Cain, who clearly thinks that this isn't really that idea.

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Understands that the military scenarios are super dangerous and that the Iranians will be able

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to shut down the strait and every military in the US for the last 20, 30 years has gained out

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how the Iranians could shut down the strait in a major conflict. Trump hears very little of that,

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and he's taking away. I'm incredible. I'm confident I'm going to make this happen. Those are the reasons

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he wanted. He thought it would be take out the Supreme Leader, then the negotiate would get a

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bit of deal. We'll have a political system there or political leader there. That is obedient to us.

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Yep. It will be, and it will be, it won't be a day, but it's not going to be a month.

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And what actually happened? That did not happen. What actually happened is the Americans took out,

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well, the Israelis took out the Supreme Leader, and also took out a lot of the military leadership

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that the Americans had been speaking to, which is why Trump came out and he said, well, a lot of

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the guys we're talking to are dead now, so we don't really know who to work with. He said that,

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even if it's true, and it was, you don't want the president saying that, he has no filter,

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which is one of the more interesting things about this presidency. What happened is the Iranian

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leadership was taken out. The response was immediately what they call this mosaic situation where

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they decentralized the military decision-making to local commanders because they were worried that

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the high-level commanders, if they were on cell phones, if they were engaging with other commanders,

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the Israelis would know where they were and they'd be able to assassinate them. So then suddenly,

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the Iranians were taking shots at other, at Gulf states, at critical infrastructure and stopping

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transit from the strait. This is one of the questions I had is in several interviews that Trump has

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done. He alludes to the fact that he thinks he's talking to the right people. Do you really believe,

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I know there was a meeting recently in Pakistan where they sent JD Vance in to negotiate with Iran.

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Do you think anyone is running around at the moment? Is there leadership in Iran? Is it possible to

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negotiate and control all of these dispersed forces at the moment? First, the RSA answer is it's

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impossible to know because this is right now the internal decision-making of Iran is extremely

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buttoned up and they ain't talking to anyone about that. But it's very easy to assess two things.

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First, that their ability to make centralized decision plans and implement them is real.

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So when their biggest gas field is hit and they say we're going to hit you back in return,

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they are able to implement on that in short order. So we've seen a number of occasions in the last

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five weeks where Iran has gone from statement made by the foreign ministry and by spokespeople to

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action taken by local commander in Iran, which implies that there is a centralized structure.

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We also see toll taking on the straight by individuals that are being ordered by the central

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Iranian government to do that. They're not operating by themselves. So in that regard,

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the fact that the Iranians showed up in Islamabad in Pakistan with significant leadership

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with the foreign minister, also the speaker of the parliament, but also a team of experts

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who had briefs on negotiating on a number of different points on the straight and on ballistic

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missiles and on support of proxy actors and on the nuclear issue, which proved the most divisive

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in those 21 hours of talks, shows that this regime is still very much functioning despite

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all of the Israeli and the American efforts to say that they've done all this incredible damage.

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This regime is still very much in place and they couldn't get a deal. So Trump announced that he's

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going to block the straight from using himself just hours ago. I think that that is also overstated.

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You have 21 hours of talks led by the vice president of the United States. I assure you,

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if these talks were a disaster, they don't last 24 hours, two or three, and then they're out.

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21 hours means very substantive conversations on the entire range of topics that were of importance

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to the Americans, the Iranians. Trump did not get the outcome he wanted ultimately. I'm not super

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surprised because the Iranians feel like they have more leverage right now than the United States

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thinks they do and this frustrates Trump immensely. And so at the end, and remember, he's

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calling and talking with vans more than 10 times over the course of this entire conversation.

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Their regular contact. At that point, Trump says, okay, I'm blockading the straight.

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But just before markets open on Monday, you also see reporting that, well, these talks that were

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a disaster, we're going to engage in further talks. So maybe it wasn't such a disaster. Maybe what's

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really going on here is Trump wants to show that he still has more leverage to use against the

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Iranians because he's lost a lot of his leverage. He gave a speech to the American people. One

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speech so far about Iran prime time speech in that speech. He said, war's almost over two to three

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weeks. Max, we're done. If I'm the Iranians and I hear that, I'm like, great. The Americans can't

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take this pain anymore. They can't take it. He keeps saying straight, not my problem straights.

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Let them take care of it. I hear that. I'm the Iranians. Great. He can't take the

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economic pain. He knows he doesn't have a military solution. So it's not that the Iranians are only

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hearing for Trump. I'm going to destroy your civilization. They're seeing what he's actually doing.

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And he seems to change his mind a lot or not follow through on some of the threats that he makes.

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Right. Of course. And then they also will be aware that he's becoming increasingly unpopular

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on this issue specific issue on this issue specifically. He is underwater just like he was on

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Greenland where he eventually completely did a 180. He was going to put tariffs on all the

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Europeans that supported Denmark. He had to take Greenland. Those things went away.

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So you're sat there. You're Iran. You're going, Trump's own people are pressurizing him to get

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the hell out of here. He's unpopular day by day. It's hurting his economy. His midterms

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elections that are coming up. He's going to be severely hurt and he's going to lose power in

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that regard. So actually the Iranian leaders, I mean, they might be incentivized just to wait

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it out. That's right. Because they don't think they have to wait it out for months.

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And I think that's a democracy. So he's going to be unelected at some point in a couple of days.

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They saw China. China did this. Right. Last year, Liberation Day is a mayor as Trump called it

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where he puts tariffs on all these countries. He puts these high tariffs on China. They hit back.

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He does it again. They hit back again. He's like, I'm going to do export controls. I say,

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we're going to shut down your critical minerals. Suddenly CEOs are going to Mar-a-Lago. They say,

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you got to deal with the Iranians or we're going to shut down our factory lines in red states.

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Trump has to back down. Right. So they've already seen that when a country has leverage over Trump

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and they can hit him, he has the most strong military in the world, but he also has a glass shot.

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He can't take a hit the way that unelected non-democracies can. The Chinese and now the Iranians

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over the straight. So what Trump is doing with announcing the blockade, and by the way,

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he hasn't broken a ceasefire. So even though a blockade is an act of war, he still hasn't said,

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okay, you guys have to start hitting the Iranians again right now. So this is still deescalated

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compared to a week ago. A week ago, this looked much more dangerous than it looks today. He's

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saying to the Iranians, hey, I'm willing to cut off your source of funds. I'm willing to stop you

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from exporting oil and making money off of it. Same Trump that suspended those sanctions on Iran

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because he wanted to keep the prices down. So that's what's happening right here. Iran also,

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again, I'm trying to put myself in the mind of the incentive structure of the Iranian leaders.

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They can't let it be seen or known that dropping bombs on us made us pandit to you. Because if they

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set that president's then for the next couple of decades, every American leader is going to know,

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okay, if you want Iran to play ball, all you do is take out their leadership, you drop loads of

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bombs on everything they have, and then they come and negotiate with you and give up their

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nuclear weapons and everything else. So I imagine there's an element of the Iranians now going,

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if we buckle here, then for the rest of time, America are going to repeat this playbook.

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I hear you saying I would put it slightly differently. I think that after the 12-day war

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last June, the Iranians understood that their deterrent capacity had failed. They were incapable

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of preventing the Americans and the Israelis from hitting them and their proxies whenever they

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wanted. We've talked a lot about Iran. We haven't talked at all about Lebanon. There's another war

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going on in Lebanon right now. The Israelis are hitting the Lebanese very hard. There's over a

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million displaced people in the last several weeks. Why? What is this? Well, a Hezbollah,

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which is a terrorist organization, as recognized by Israel and the United States, though not everybody,

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continues to have the ability to engage in strikes against Israel. No, we're close to the

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strength of the Israeli military, but the Lebanese government promised to disarm them. They have

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not done that. And so Hezbollah has been able to continue to engage in missile strikes, relatively

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small numbers of missile strikes, into the north of Israel where Israeli citizens lived. There

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was a period of time after the October 7th attacks by Hamas, where over 100,000 Israelis had to

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evacuate from their homes and their schools and the rest for like a year because Hezbollah was

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making their lives hell, right? So what Israel is now doing is they're going to take territory

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about five to seven kilometers of Lebanese land. They're going to occupy it as a buffer zone

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to protect those Israeli civilians from Hezbollah being able to hit them with their weapons.

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That is the intention here. And so what Iran understands is that their ability to deter Israel

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from hitting Hezbollah Hezbollah at the beginning. In October 7th, Hezbollah was the most

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powerful non-state military in the world. No one else was close. And today Hezbollah has shown

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that their leadership gets targeted and destroyed, assassinated across the board by the Israelis,

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that their military is incapable. Their critical infrastructure can be disrupted and that Israel

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can also hit Beirut, the capital Lebanon, and no one can do anything over trying to Israel.

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There's lots of chaos going on in the world right now. Yes. Was there a way to have avoided all

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of this? Was there something that someone could have done further upstream to avoid all this chaos

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that we're seeing now in the Middle East? Like what was the first domino that fell? In Iran,

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you do have an enormously repressive regime that has the ability to take action against their

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own people in an incredibly brutal way as we saw it play out in January. And it's also a regime

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that does not respect the right of Israel to exist. It's also a regime that has been sending weapons

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and money and military advice to other revolutionary actors around the region undermining security

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in Yemen, undermining security in Iraq, undermining security in Syria. So the fact that at the core

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of the Middle East, you have a revolutionary regime that was exporting instability and violence

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is a serious problem. That's number one. Number two, Israel. America's top ally in the region.

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America first, but Trump still gives billions of dollars every year to Israel, even as he's cut off

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military aid and support for almost everyone, including for Ukraine, right? This country is very capable

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of now attacking all of its enemies and creating outcomes that it wants, whether or not it creates

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instability in those countries. We've seen that in Gaza and the West Bank, right? I mean,

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reality is Israel is continuing to take more and more territory in the West Bank and no one can

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do anything about it. They hit Lebanon really hard. No one can respond to that. So that is creating

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a reality where Israel is able to determine outcomes and even attack Iran directly

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with the United States. They felt very confident about taking that on and that there would not be

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backlash that would undermine Israel's own political survival. It wasn't an existential risk to Israel

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and even if Iran developed nukes, which is everyone wants to prevent from happening,

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but Israel has their own nukes, right? And they have like 100 plus. So those are two fundamental

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drivers of of conflict and instability in the region, one aligned with the United States,

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one a revolutionary theocracy. There have been very positive developments in this region,

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very positive developments. First of all, Syria, Assad was a brutal dictator that was overthrown

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by his own people and his own military would not support and fight for him and the Russians proved

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that they couldn't support him in a significant way. And so now you have an opportunity for Syria

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to become a representative government that can engage with others around the region

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and more broadly. That's a positive. You've got Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Qatar that are

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engaging in transformative domestic policies to attract investment from all over the world,

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to build experiences that everyone would want to travel and engage in to create work opportunities

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that are far better remunerated than anything that foreign labor could get in their own

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home countries, allowing them to bring money home. And in the case of Saudi Arabia specifically,

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they're taking 35 million people. Half of that economy used to be closed to women

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and now they're bringing women into the economy. They're actually not just educating them,

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but they're giving them opportunities in every area of employment. That is one of the most

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extraordinary stories in the world today in terms of change in governance. And that continues.

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Then the final point here is that in the context of this Iran war,

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we do, and in the context of the United States, which is doing less global leadership,

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there are questions of how these countries that are aligned with the U.S. want to ensure their

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own futures. And so we see increasingly two different blocks that are starting to form.

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You've got the United Arab Emirates together with Israel. You remember the Abraham Accords,

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which was Trump's big foreign policy success in his first term, where he got these countries,

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the UAE and others, to recognize Israel and start doing a lot more tourism and business and

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technology transfers and the rest. So UAE Israel, the United States and India are increasingly

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aligning on national security and technology. And they're becoming more of a international block

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based on this region. At the same time, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan long work together on

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defense are now much more public about an alliance. Pakistan is nuclear. Saudi Arabia is not,

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but Pakistan would provide them nuclear weapons if they really wanted it. That's absolutely

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something to think about. They are increasingly becoming a regional defense quad for countries

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together with Turkey and Egypt. Big countries, big populations aligning more diplomatically and

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on defense, calling for a regional security architecture in the region, but that would not be

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easily aligned with the UAE, America, Israel and with India. So that is also a significant

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tension. And in the context of all of that, 95 million people in Iran, whose military has

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been substantially degraded, whose economy and industry have been substantially degraded,

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and who were already running their economy into the ground before the war happened. These guys

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aren't winners. They're survivors, right? They have influence over the straight, but they're not

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winning. And this is dangerous longer. Your firm makes a lot of predictions. So I wanted to ask you

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to help me try and look forward as to how this conflict might end. We're in a position now where

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it seems that the US aren't going to give up the demand to Iran that they cease to develop and pursue

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nuclear enrichment. It appears that Iran have said that they want the right, and they believe

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they have the right, they said this before this conflict started to an enriched uranium and to

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have nuclear power plants and all these kinds of things. So how does this end? Trump's now,

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he's blockaded the straight-offal moves. We're in another standoff. The cease fires in place,

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the cease fires in place, which I think he said was 14 days, and will now probably be what got

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nine, 10 days left of that. He's thinking a lot about his legacy. He can't be reelected. He

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talks sometimes about, you know, winning the peace prize and wanting to be on a Mount Rushmore

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of Presidents and all this. So he can't just leave. If he just leaves, then Iran carry on with

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their enrichment program. It goes down in history, almost like a bush failure, geopolitical failure.

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He can't just leave. He has to be seen to win, but also Iran can't let him be seen to win.

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So how what happens? I think, unlike almost anybody else, you can imagine,

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if he decided that he wanted to end this, he could end this. He could just leave. And he would say,

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I won. He's already said this in different ways. I don't even care about the nukes because we've

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already entombed them. They're under all this rubble. We've got satellite coverage. If the Iranians

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try to get at them, we can hit them back. He's already said that there's already a regime change.

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It's already new people. We can work. We can talk with these people. He already said the

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straight isn't his problem, right? But of course, he's also said different things, sometimes in

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the same tweet. So he's picking and choosing. But what I'm suggesting to you is that Trump has

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already moved towards de-escalation. You'll spot on when you say he set the stage to back out.

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To back out. We won. Regime change. Straight is not my problem. We have our own oil. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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But then if you don't open that straight, I'm going to end civilization. Yeah.

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Which didn't seem to fit. It seemed like he was setting the stage to back out. And then suddenly

384
00:37:16.560 --> 00:37:19.440
the civilization to me, I'm going to bump your bridges and you nuclear power plants.

385
00:37:20.240 --> 00:37:23.840
Which suddenly made me think, okay, so maybe he does really count. And wasn't plausible, by the way.

386
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:26.560
Yeah. And there was no chance that he was actually going to do all that that evening.

387
00:37:26.560 --> 00:37:30.880
Because why didn't he just back out? Well, I do not want to be Trump's psychologist.

388
00:37:30.880 --> 00:37:39.040
Yeah. It is very clear that he is impulsive and that he does not have much impulse control.

389
00:37:39.840 --> 00:37:46.080
Nor does he create around him mechanisms that create impulse control, that enforce impulse control.

390
00:37:46.080 --> 00:37:51.120
He's on his phone all the time. He watches the media relentlessly. People engage with him from

391
00:37:51.120 --> 00:37:56.720
all over the world on his cell phone. And he has recency bias. The thing he heard and saw last,

392
00:37:56.720 --> 00:38:01.600
he frequently focuses on. But he also watches the markets. Yeah. He seems obsessed. We don't stop

393
00:38:01.600 --> 00:38:04.960
Trump. Stop markets. That's why so many of the announcements he makes are right before or

394
00:38:04.960 --> 00:38:09.280
right after the market opens. And obviously there's been a lot of insider trading concerns around

395
00:38:09.280 --> 00:38:13.280
that too. And people, there's, he's concerned about personal enrichment and people around him

396
00:38:13.280 --> 00:38:18.640
making billions of dollars. That plays in too. I wish it didn't. It's horrible to talk about it.

397
00:38:18.640 --> 00:38:24.080
But you can't avoid that topic. What happens? You want to what happens? I don't have a crystal ball.

398
00:38:24.080 --> 00:38:30.480
No one does. But where I think this could be going on the basis of that, the most likely outcome

399
00:38:30.480 --> 00:38:36.000
is that the ceasefire is eventually extended. That we have those talks that were 21 hours that

400
00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:40.080
were substantive. There'll be more talks. Maybe not with the vice president, but there'll be more talks.

401
00:38:40.080 --> 00:38:46.720
They'll become more substantive. And that eventually I expect that the Iranians are more likely

402
00:38:46.720 --> 00:38:55.040
to give on the nuclear issue and on enrichment. If they're able to maintain a privileged position

403
00:38:55.120 --> 00:39:00.880
on transit through the straight, because that will help provide them with money and with security.

404
00:39:00.880 --> 00:39:05.600
They get a level of deterrence. If everybody knows these guys could shut down the straight in the

405
00:39:05.600 --> 00:39:09.920
future, that helps them. They never had nukes. They weren't going to get nukes. If they got nukes,

406
00:39:09.920 --> 00:39:14.640
they were going to get blown up. Everyone knew that. They were two weeks away. If they had access

407
00:39:14.640 --> 00:39:19.360
to the material and they reprocessed the nuclear grade and they weren't stopped by the Americans

408
00:39:19.440 --> 00:39:25.600
of these rallies, that's a lot of if-ans. But here they've got influence over the straight.

409
00:39:25.600 --> 00:39:30.480
They have it. They've used it. They're using it. They're making money. Trump does not have a

410
00:39:30.480 --> 00:39:36.160
military plan to hit them back. So I think that is the most likely outcome. And if that is the case,

411
00:39:36.160 --> 00:39:44.480
then over time, the Iranians will cut more deals with more countries to get more oil out.

412
00:39:44.480 --> 00:39:50.400
And meanwhile, there will be after the ceasefire is in place and strong, then the Europeans and

413
00:39:50.400 --> 00:39:55.120
other countries, the Indians, other countries will come in and they will start escorting ships

414
00:39:55.120 --> 00:40:00.880
to create a more secure environment in the straight itself. That is the good scenario,

415
00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:03.840
or it's the less bad scenario, because all this should have been avoided.

416
00:40:03.840 --> 00:40:07.520
I want to make sure I'm clear on this scenario. You're saying that they will concede on the

417
00:40:07.520 --> 00:40:12.480
nuclear point around potentially? At least somewhat. At least they will compromise on the nuclear point.

418
00:40:12.560 --> 00:40:16.960
But in turn, they'll get more control over the straight. Yes. And what does that mean that they'll

419
00:40:16.960 --> 00:40:22.080
be able to decide who goes through that? They'll get charged. They'll be charged. And by the way,

420
00:40:22.080 --> 00:40:28.400
you could define them charging the toll as part of the reconstruction money that they're going to

421
00:40:28.400 --> 00:40:33.360
need for the war that they use. They'll call it reparations. No one else will call it reparations,

422
00:40:33.360 --> 00:40:39.280
but that's fine. I think that is the good scenario, again, the less bad scenario. And I would say

423
00:40:39.360 --> 00:40:45.440
it is more likely than not. There is another scenario. And the other scenario is that everything

424
00:40:45.440 --> 00:40:51.360
that Trump has been saying is because he doesn't yet have a military plan. Over the last days,

425
00:40:51.360 --> 00:40:57.440
with all the ceasefire, there's still this new aircraft strike group that is

426
00:40:58.160 --> 00:41:04.720
motoring its way over to the Gulf. You got thousands more American troops that are heading into

427
00:41:04.720 --> 00:41:10.720
position. Ground troops, right? They're going to have almost 15,000 total that will be deployed by

428
00:41:10.720 --> 00:41:16.320
Trump since this war started. They're going to be there in the next two weeks. Once Trump has

429
00:41:16.320 --> 00:41:22.400
them there, he can use them. And there are lots of things he might use them on. He keeps saying,

430
00:41:22.400 --> 00:41:27.280
I keep seeing them go back before I was talking about all the ways he was saying, we don't need to

431
00:41:27.280 --> 00:41:33.040
defend the straight. We don't need the nuclear. We can hit them. But he also has been saying,

432
00:41:33.760 --> 00:41:38.800
we should take the oil. I've heard him say this on a number of occasions. I've also seen him say,

433
00:41:38.800 --> 00:41:43.120
if just the American people were a little more patient, we can take the oil. What does he mean by

434
00:41:43.120 --> 00:41:47.600
taking the oil? That's not a block. He doesn't take the oil. Blockade is stopping the Iranians

435
00:41:47.600 --> 00:41:56.160
from getting the oil out. Take the oil is control the export facility on carguiland, right? And

436
00:41:56.160 --> 00:41:59.840
you're saying this for any of that doesn't know what carguiland is and the significance of it in

437
00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:07.280
oil. So this is a comparatively small islands, but half the size of Manhattan. It's not

438
00:42:07.280 --> 00:42:15.440
incredibly fortified or defended. And it's very close to the Iranian shore. And it is responsible

439
00:42:15.440 --> 00:42:22.800
for 90% of the export of Iranian oil. Sent comm, central command say that you can take

440
00:42:23.600 --> 00:42:31.040
carguiland with 12 to 15,000 men relatively comfortably. So where is carguiland done here?

441
00:42:31.040 --> 00:42:36.400
So carguiland is right about here. It's not in the straight itself, but it is this is right off

442
00:42:36.400 --> 00:42:43.680
of the Iranian coast. And we're talking about 90% of Iranian oil export comes out through there.

443
00:42:43.680 --> 00:42:48.400
So if the Americans take it obviously very easy for the Iranians to be engaged in strikes against

444
00:42:48.880 --> 00:42:54.160
them, but the Iranians will not be able to get any oil out. So suddenly the Americans have far more

445
00:42:54.160 --> 00:43:00.720
leverage over the Iranian economy, right? In a very direct way, in a very targeted way. And that is

446
00:43:00.720 --> 00:43:08.480
the way that you take the oil. Could Trump take the oil, actually take it out of this region somehow?

447
00:43:08.480 --> 00:43:12.320
Is that like another passage three that doesn't involve? Okay, say no, no, he could just stop the oil.

448
00:43:12.320 --> 00:43:17.200
He could stop the oil. Okay. But again, if he has control of carguiland, the oil coming out of

449
00:43:17.280 --> 00:43:21.680
carguiland if you want to have bring it to market, the only ones that could do it would then be the

450
00:43:21.680 --> 00:43:26.560
Americans. Now the Iranians at that point could still disrupt the straight. And there are other

451
00:43:26.560 --> 00:43:32.080
conversations or other military plans about how you might be able to take coastal regions,

452
00:43:32.080 --> 00:43:38.160
raids on the territory that would take out more ballistic missile sites, go after their drones,

453
00:43:38.720 --> 00:43:45.360
all of this takes more troops, all this takes more casualties, but would also give you more capacity

454
00:43:45.440 --> 00:43:51.840
to eventually enforce a navigable straight with escorts, which right now you can't do. Right now,

455
00:43:51.840 --> 00:43:58.240
the Iranians can prevent you from getting any ships out if they wish to. I think that the likelihood

456
00:43:58.240 --> 00:44:04.480
that Trump is ultimately going to make that order is well below 50%. I think that the worst scenario

457
00:44:04.480 --> 00:44:10.480
is not the more likely one because he understands how unpopular it will be. But it does mean that he's

458
00:44:10.480 --> 00:44:17.840
going to have to sell a pretty ugly pig with lipstick on it. It means that because this was the

459
00:44:17.840 --> 00:44:24.080
problem Trump has is he can't blame anyone else for this. Yeah. He's the decider. Like he did it.

460
00:44:24.080 --> 00:44:28.080
I mean, he's got his secretaries in cabinet that are all saying, well, the war's up to Trump. He's

461
00:44:28.080 --> 00:44:32.320
got the war goals. It'll be over when he says it's all about Trump. He can blame NATO for not

462
00:44:32.320 --> 00:44:37.840
want to join them. The joining him was his war of choice. And he's never been responsible directly

463
00:44:37.920 --> 00:44:44.240
for an economic downturn. I mean, the pandemic wasn't his fault. Right. This is an economic downturn

464
00:44:44.240 --> 00:44:50.720
with oil prices shooting up. Gas is over four bucks a gallon. Diesel's over five. Inflations

465
00:44:50.720 --> 00:44:57.520
ticking up. Food prices are going up. He's wildly underwater on affordability. And he is completely

466
00:44:57.520 --> 00:45:02.400
responsible for no one else is responsible. And zooming out even further when we think about this

467
00:45:02.400 --> 00:45:07.040
on a global scale, you've got Russia who are at war with the Ukraine. That seems to have just

468
00:45:07.040 --> 00:45:11.040
completely vanished from the new cycle, by the way. It has not in Europe, I promise you,

469
00:45:11.040 --> 00:45:14.640
but in the United States, they're talking a lot less about it. It's true. In Poland,

470
00:45:14.640 --> 00:45:18.880
this is a very big issue. In the Baltics, it is a very big issue. And then you've got China

471
00:45:18.880 --> 00:45:24.240
who must be laughing because it looks like the United States are just sort of self-harming

472
00:45:24.800 --> 00:45:29.840
themselves. Yep. And then you've got Europe, which is the last power who seems to now just be

473
00:45:29.840 --> 00:45:32.720
sort of colluding with themselves and getting together and saying, listen, we're not going to

474
00:45:32.720 --> 00:45:38.320
help the U.S. anymore. I grew up through all these little conflicts and wars. And the UK

475
00:45:38.320 --> 00:45:44.080
always seemed to come to the U.S. school. Yeah. And for the first time ever, I'm watching the UK

476
00:45:44.080 --> 00:45:47.520
go actually, you know, you do this when you're selling. I'm going to meet with Macron in France,

477
00:45:47.520 --> 00:45:53.360
and we're going to, we're going to huddle and go at alone. What is that big picture? And which

478
00:45:53.360 --> 00:45:57.200
part of that big picture is most pertinent to talk about? Yeah. China is the most pertinent

479
00:45:57.280 --> 00:46:02.960
because it's the most powerful. Russia is the easiest to deal with, which is that for the Russians,

480
00:46:03.920 --> 00:46:10.800
they don't have much that they produce that's manufactured. They don't have very good technology,

481
00:46:10.800 --> 00:46:13.920
right? They're relying more on the Chinese. They've got oil there, everything.

482
00:46:14.640 --> 00:46:20.640
That they manufacture. They've got oil. They've got gas. They've got fertilizer, right? All the

483
00:46:20.640 --> 00:46:25.040
things with the prices have just spiked through the roof. That's what the Russians have. That's where

484
00:46:25.200 --> 00:46:30.640
their power is. And so they are making so much more money. Their economy was really getting squeezed

485
00:46:30.640 --> 00:46:34.720
with all the sanctions. Now they're getting so much more for everything that they actually sell.

486
00:46:34.720 --> 00:46:39.440
And the Americans have reduced sanctions like they did in Iran against Russia because Trump

487
00:46:39.440 --> 00:46:44.160
cares about the markets as you say. So Russia is in a better position for that reason. And they're

488
00:46:44.160 --> 00:46:48.640
in a better position because all the weapons the Americans have been selling to the Europeans to get

489
00:46:48.720 --> 00:46:55.200
to Ukraine. America now needs to get to the Middle East. So the Ukrainians are going to have a

490
00:46:55.200 --> 00:47:00.320
harder time defending their cities against Russian ballistic missiles against Russian drones.

491
00:47:00.320 --> 00:47:07.680
So this clearly means that Putin will be much, much less interested in a ceasefire, which let's

492
00:47:07.680 --> 00:47:13.040
face it. He wasn't really very interested in to begin with Trump at the beginning of this term

493
00:47:13.040 --> 00:47:18.080
promised he would end this war. He was hugely frustrated. He goes to Israel to announce the

494
00:47:18.080 --> 00:47:23.760
Gaza ceasefire. It's a big win. The Knesset, the Israeli parliament, their standing ovation.

495
00:47:23.760 --> 00:47:27.840
And it's like, you know, I thought I was going to get the Russia war done. And I failed that

496
00:47:27.840 --> 00:47:32.640
they haven't been able to do that. I got this one instead. Like Trump never brings up his own

497
00:47:32.640 --> 00:47:39.360
failures, but this really bothers him. So here you've got yet more ability for the Russians to say

498
00:47:39.360 --> 00:47:44.400
we're going to persist. And it makes it more likely the Trump will eventually do a deal with

499
00:47:44.400 --> 00:47:50.240
the Russians over the heads of the Europeans. So that's the Russia issue kind of in a little box.

500
00:47:50.880 --> 00:47:57.120
Now Europe, we already talked about how Europe is having its problems economically. It doesn't

501
00:47:57.120 --> 00:48:02.320
have the productivity, it doesn't have the growth. What did Europe do wrong in your view? Like,

502
00:48:02.320 --> 00:48:07.280
how did I'm a European? I guess I was born in Botswana in Africa, but I moved to the UK when I was

503
00:48:07.280 --> 00:48:14.960
young. So I guess I'm British. What did the country do wrong? Because the country was so strong

504
00:48:14.960 --> 00:48:21.360
and powerful and respected when I was younger. And I love Britain, but it appears on a global stage

505
00:48:21.360 --> 00:48:27.200
that that perception has changed. The US are talking to us like a laptop at Davos. I saw the

506
00:48:27.200 --> 00:48:31.120
talks and they're like, you need to get your shit together and be stronger and stop being so won't

507
00:48:31.920 --> 00:48:37.200
Yeah. Well, first, the Americans talking to the Europeans that way has a lot more to do with the

508
00:48:37.200 --> 00:48:42.480
change in administration. I don't think any other democratic or republican president would do

509
00:48:42.480 --> 00:48:49.440
what Trump is doing to his closest allies. That's more unique. But it is certainly true that over

510
00:48:49.440 --> 00:48:56.640
the last 30 years, there have been two really big geopolitical shifts. The United States has

511
00:48:56.720 --> 00:49:02.240
shifted its orientation, but not geopolitical power. But in terms of power shift, you've got the

512
00:49:02.240 --> 00:49:07.760
rise of China and the global South India in particular after China, but China is the biggest piece

513
00:49:07.760 --> 00:49:16.560
of that. And then you have the decline of American allies. Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea,

514
00:49:16.560 --> 00:49:22.800
these are countries most of which are contracting demographically. Right? The countries most of which

515
00:49:22.800 --> 00:49:30.080
that have much flatter growth and much more reduced productivity than the United States. They've

516
00:49:30.080 --> 00:49:34.000
not been investing in their own defense. They've not been investing in their own technology.

517
00:49:34.640 --> 00:49:40.320
So what you see is an asymmetry. At the same time that the Americans are saying we're not interested

518
00:49:40.320 --> 00:49:43.360
in the rest of the world. We don't want to do all the stuff. Want to fight the wars? Don't want

519
00:49:43.360 --> 00:49:48.800
free trade. You're also seeing a reality where those countries don't bring as much to the table

520
00:49:49.360 --> 00:49:57.040
in a conversation with the United States. So the so-called Draghi plan, the 800-page plan by

521
00:49:57.040 --> 00:50:02.240
the former central bank head in the earth, the ECB, Mario Draghi. They called them Super Mario.

522
00:50:02.240 --> 00:50:06.960
He had this competitiveness report that all of these things that the Europeans needed to do,

523
00:50:06.960 --> 00:50:13.520
and he would say the Brits as well, to address that, to build on to ownership, to spend in ways

524
00:50:13.520 --> 00:50:20.240
that would actually bring a return long-term. It's like invests in new technologies to reduce red

525
00:50:20.240 --> 00:50:28.560
tape. The plan is there, but unlike the United States, unlike China, Europe is not a country.

526
00:50:29.280 --> 00:50:36.720
Europe is 27 countries in the EU and the United Kingdom, which decided for Brexit. It's a lot harder

527
00:50:36.720 --> 00:50:42.400
when you don't have scale. It's just harder. And when you have elections every, you know, so a couple,

528
00:50:42.400 --> 00:50:47.760
every few years, it's just more challenging. You can't do the sort of stuff that the UAE or the

529
00:50:47.760 --> 00:50:53.920
Saudis or the Singaporeans or the Chinese can do its scale long-term. So as a consequence,

530
00:50:53.920 --> 00:51:00.160
what did Europe do wrong? Europe focused, you're believed that the world after the wall came down

531
00:51:00.160 --> 00:51:04.480
in 1989 after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. They believed that the world was just going to be

532
00:51:04.480 --> 00:51:09.040
peaceful. Everyone was going to have a system like the Europeans did, so they didn't need to invest

533
00:51:09.040 --> 00:51:13.920
in defense. And it was okay if they didn't invest in lots of technology because they had friends

534
00:51:13.920 --> 00:51:17.760
that they could work with. And maybe their growth wouldn't be as big, but their quality of life

535
00:51:17.760 --> 00:51:25.360
would be so high. And they were completely wrong. China did not. They got wealthier, but they

536
00:51:25.360 --> 00:51:30.080
didn't suddenly align with the United States and Europe. China didn't become a free market economy.

537
00:51:30.080 --> 00:51:36.400
China didn't become a democracy. China is a consolidated dictatorship under Xi Jinping,

538
00:51:36.480 --> 00:51:41.200
with no term limits and with control of the economy, state control of the economy.

539
00:51:41.200 --> 00:51:47.360
And that's not an easy environment for the Europeans to be comfortable being non-competitive.

540
00:51:47.920 --> 00:51:53.920
A lot of this come down to energy and productivity. The cost of energy. So a lot of these countries

541
00:51:53.920 --> 00:51:59.520
decided to carry on drilling oil and pursuing nuclear. And a lot of the European countries decided

542
00:51:59.520 --> 00:52:04.960
to go for net zero where they tried to focus more on sort of sustainable energy sources. Whereas

543
00:52:05.040 --> 00:52:10.000
China didn't seem to go for quite frankly. The US didn't really seem to care much. And then also

544
00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:15.440
on this point of entrepreneurship and innovation, the US and China have both really aggressively

545
00:52:15.440 --> 00:52:19.360
pursued entrepreneurship and innovation and new technologies, whereas one could make the case

546
00:52:19.360 --> 00:52:24.880
that the European environment has been less friendly to new technologies and innovation.

547
00:52:24.880 --> 00:52:31.120
So the Chinese, usually the Chinese don't really give a fuck. Not true. The Chinese have invested

548
00:52:31.360 --> 00:52:36.240
in everything. So the Chinese know that they still need lots of dirty coal in order to power

549
00:52:37.120 --> 00:52:43.520
their industry. But they also have invested like nobody else in green technologies at scale.

550
00:52:43.520 --> 00:52:48.960
Solar and things like that. Solar and wind and their car companies are the electric vehicle

551
00:52:48.960 --> 00:52:53.920
leaders in the world and batteries that are the best batteries, the most efficient batteries

552
00:52:53.920 --> 00:53:00.320
at scale in the world and all of the materials, the raw materials that go into producing those.

553
00:53:00.320 --> 00:53:05.040
The Chinese have invested in this for decades now and nuclear, right? While the Europeans

554
00:53:05.040 --> 00:53:08.800
have shut with the exception of France, France has heavy nuclear and that's helped them in this

555
00:53:08.800 --> 00:53:14.960
crisis. Most of the Europeans have turned away from nuclear. The Europeans have not done an

556
00:53:14.960 --> 00:53:20.560
all for all approach. The Europeans have done it. Let's lean into green, but let's make

557
00:53:20.560 --> 00:53:25.360
other technologies more challenging, including nuclear, which should be seen as a green technology.

558
00:53:25.360 --> 00:53:32.240
So yeah, there's no question that that has inhibited growth in your. The United States has been

559
00:53:32.240 --> 00:53:37.520
on again, off again. You've got one administration that's leaning into green. The next one that's not

560
00:53:37.520 --> 00:53:43.280
when America should be doing America. Today is the world's leading oil producer by a long margin

561
00:53:43.920 --> 00:53:49.120
and fracking natural gas as well by a long margin doing credible work there. Yet the United

562
00:53:49.200 --> 00:53:57.040
States is actively undermining the ability to also produce clean technologies for energy. Texas

563
00:53:57.040 --> 00:54:02.640
produces more sustainable energy than any other state in the United States. Red Texas. So I mean,

564
00:54:02.640 --> 00:54:09.360
it's not like this is these energy technologies are not Republican or Democrat. They are at scale

565
00:54:09.360 --> 00:54:16.400
becoming cheaper, you need all of them. And so the Europeans made a mistake in not recognizing

566
00:54:16.640 --> 00:54:20.800
that you need everything. Everybody says that the United States is the world's leading superpower.

567
00:54:21.600 --> 00:54:26.960
And that has been the case, you know, hard to argue against that for a long time. Is that set to

568
00:54:26.960 --> 00:54:36.160
change? Is China set to become the world's leading superpower? Not soon. But the project, the present

569
00:54:36.160 --> 00:54:43.760
trajectory, if it continues, clearly would challenge America's dominant position. Clearly. I mean,

570
00:54:43.760 --> 00:54:47.920
the US has the dollar is the global reserve currency right now. Nothing else is close.

571
00:54:48.480 --> 00:54:55.200
And transacting in the dollar is a huge advantage for the Americans who can continue to print money

572
00:54:55.200 --> 00:55:01.440
with reckless abandon and run massive deficits and have lower interest rates as a consequence.

573
00:55:01.440 --> 00:55:06.960
China does not have a convertible currency. They don't have rule of law. If they open their currency

574
00:55:06.960 --> 00:55:11.680
to become convertible, they'd be massive capital flight and political instability. That's what they

575
00:55:11.680 --> 00:55:16.560
worry about. So they don't compete with the US there. China's military is still a fraction

576
00:55:16.560 --> 00:55:20.800
of the capabilities of the US. They're watching what's happening in Venezuela and Iran.

577
00:55:21.440 --> 00:55:25.360
They don't have that capacity. They're not close. They're building their nuclear weapons out.

578
00:55:25.360 --> 00:55:28.880
They're building their conventional weapons out. They have never fought a naval war.

579
00:55:29.440 --> 00:55:34.400
They have, it's decades since they fought a ground war, they're not capable of doing these things.

580
00:55:34.400 --> 00:55:40.160
So is that any concern with China? Yes. What is that concern? The concern with China is that the most

581
00:55:40.160 --> 00:55:45.280
the world changing new technologies out there, the Chinese are investing at scale.

582
00:55:45.280 --> 00:55:50.960
And the Chinese are now either at parity or ahead of the Americans and everyone else by a long margin

583
00:55:51.600 --> 00:55:56.480
in many of the core technologies that matter most in the world. And what does that potentially mean?

584
00:55:57.120 --> 00:56:01.520
That is worth paying attention to. Why does that matter? It means that they can set the rules.

585
00:56:01.520 --> 00:56:05.200
They can set the standards. They can sell the products that you need them. That if they

586
00:56:05.200 --> 00:56:10.000
determine that they're going to shut you off your debt, right? I mean, think about what happened.

587
00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:16.560
The Europeans were so dependent on Russia for gas and for oil. And the Russians invade Ukraine.

588
00:56:16.560 --> 00:56:21.760
They want to shut it down and it destroys the European economy. The Americans are doing just fine.

589
00:56:22.320 --> 00:56:27.920
The Americans are building and get so many of their semiconductors from TSMC in Taiwan. I'm

590
00:56:27.920 --> 00:56:31.680
sure you've talked about that before in your show. Well, what happens if China decides that they

591
00:56:31.680 --> 00:56:37.040
want to cut that off? If they have that capacity, the Americans are really screwed. So you don't want

592
00:56:37.040 --> 00:56:42.800
to be in a position where one country, an adversarial country that you don't trust have a good

593
00:56:42.800 --> 00:56:47.920
relationship with suddenly produces all this stuff that you desperately need or your economy will

594
00:56:47.920 --> 00:56:55.920
call a part. And yet that is the trajectory of a presidency. If China had elections coming up in

595
00:56:55.920 --> 00:57:01.680
November, I'd be worried, right? Because you know, you can just imagine a situation where the Chinese

596
00:57:01.680 --> 00:57:06.960
being more short term would say, well, look, the Americans are distracted with Iran. And the Europeans

597
00:57:06.960 --> 00:57:10.960
are distracted with Ukraine now is our time for Taiwan because we really want to get like all that

598
00:57:10.960 --> 00:57:16.000
support. So let's get it out. Chinese aren't doing short term at all. They're doing long term.

599
00:57:16.000 --> 00:57:20.400
The Chinese are thinking for 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road and they're investing

600
00:57:21.120 --> 00:57:25.920
that way. They're taking very little risk. They're making no regret moves to set themselves up

601
00:57:25.920 --> 00:57:31.120
long term while the Americans are doing all this short term stuff, all this electoral cycle stuff.

602
00:57:31.120 --> 00:57:36.160
That's the word. If the Americans, the biggest danger to the United States is not China.

603
00:57:36.160 --> 00:57:41.920
It's America. It's America getting in its own way and not investing in having the best products,

604
00:57:41.920 --> 00:57:46.800
the most competitiveness, the most attractive place to study, the most attractive place to live,

605
00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:53.760
most attractive place to work. This has had probably the single biggest impact on my office.

606
00:57:53.760 --> 00:57:58.320
Of all the products that I've tried that have given me productivity gains or cognitive boosts,

607
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I would say that exogenous ketones are in the top three most pivotal things that have given me

608
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massive productivity gain. It's some Stanford graduates that have been able to basically bottle up

609
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the effect you get from being in a ketogenic diet in a small shot that you can take that makes

610
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you feel incredibly focused and gives your brain an incredible source of energy and the clinical

611
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studies that have been done on exogenous ketones have absolutely blown my mind. I reached out to them,

612
00:58:25.280 --> 00:58:29.200
I became a current in the company, I became an investor in the company and so it's with great

613
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pride that I can tell you that this exists. If you haven't tried these shots, go to ketone.com slash

614
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shipment. I still buy my ketone shots predominantly online but thankfully I can now grab them at

616
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Target whenever I drive past them here in the United States as well because we're now stocked

617
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in Target. Where your first shot is completely free. I'm 100% more productive using this app

618
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despite spending 50% less time typing and that might confuse you but let me explain which is

619
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exactly why I invested in Whisper Flow. There are also one of our sponsors on this podcast. Whisper

620
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Flow turns your speech into text so you can send it in any app or device at any time and I promise

621
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622
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623
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it also corrects your speech if you change your mind mid-sentence before turning it into text on

624
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the device. I love it and I know my team loves it too because when I posted it in our Slack channel

625
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asking if anybody wanted a pro version half the office said yes and they had it within an hour

626
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which tells me everything. This is the tool you and your team need to speed yourselves up and

627
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capture those important ideas so that they don't disappear. Head over to Whisper Flow.ai-steven to

628
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download it now. That's w-i-s-p-r-f-l-o-w.ai-steven. You did a TED talk two years ago in June,

629
00:59:57.680 --> 01:00:03.280
it was published in June 14th, 2023 and it's done tens of millions of views on YouTube. It is

630
01:00:03.360 --> 01:00:09.440
titled The Next Global Superpower. Is it? Who do you think? Yeah. I was looking at the comments

631
01:00:09.440 --> 01:00:15.040
section earlier and some of the top comments are you called it a year ago and you were 100%

632
01:00:15.040 --> 01:00:19.920
right. There's another one here saying hello, writing to you from a year in the future. I have

633
01:00:19.920 --> 01:00:27.280
some bad news about 2025. You were right. What were you right about? I was, I guess what they're

634
01:00:27.760 --> 01:00:33.040
saying. This, you and I have been talking about the US and China and traditional geopolitics.

635
01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:39.520
What I was saying is that increasingly the world is moving beyond geopolitics and that the most

636
01:00:39.520 --> 01:00:45.040
important new global leaders aren't countries, they're technology companies that are writing their

637
01:00:45.040 --> 01:00:52.080
own rules. I was looking how the Russian invasion of Ukraine that that war started not on the 24th

638
01:00:52.080 --> 01:00:59.040
February about the 23rd of February when Microsoft found out about all of the cyber strikes

639
01:00:59.040 --> 01:01:02.720
that were hitting Ukraine and made the US government and the Ukrainian government aware of it.

640
01:01:02.720 --> 01:01:08.320
I look at Elon Musk and providing Starlink. If it wasn't for that, I'm not sure the Ukrainian

641
01:01:08.320 --> 01:01:11.840
government was going to be able to fight these guys on the ground. They wouldn't have been able

642
01:01:11.840 --> 01:01:16.560
to communicate if Selensky might be gone. These were companies. The US government at that point

643
01:01:16.560 --> 01:01:20.720
was scared about sending all the military support, but the companies were making a big difference.

644
01:01:20.720 --> 01:01:28.160
Now I see that these new AI tools, like we saw with Anthropic and Mythos.

645
01:01:28.160 --> 01:01:35.200
For anyone that doesn't know, Anthropic released a new AI model, which they say is so capable

646
01:01:35.200 --> 01:01:40.480
that it presents the world with a really fundamental security risk to all of our technology. They say in

647
01:01:40.480 --> 01:01:49.200
their report that in testing this new model, this new type of AI could find security vulnerabilities

648
01:01:49.200 --> 01:01:54.480
in lots of different applications and software applications that we use. Essentially,

649
01:01:54.480 --> 01:02:00.400
it posed a cyber security risk. It could hack a lot of tanks and critical infrastructure,

650
01:02:00.400 --> 01:02:07.840
your power grid, water systems, anything with software and not just like the things that a hacker

651
01:02:07.840 --> 01:02:15.760
could get to, but every bug that could be exploited. It's so powerful that they couldn't release it

652
01:02:15.840 --> 01:02:21.760
because it would have been an immediate systemic risk to the global economy in our security.

653
01:02:21.760 --> 01:02:26.400
And do you believe them? I say this because I heard some people debating whether this was marketing

654
01:02:26.400 --> 01:02:31.120
talk for them as a company to say, look, look how powerful we are that we're not going to release

655
01:02:31.120 --> 01:02:35.760
this model because it's going to cause them a charm. Or do you think they are being responsible?

656
01:02:36.720 --> 01:02:42.960
It is inconceivable to me that a company that is this capable of raising money and this

657
01:02:42.960 --> 01:02:48.560
capable of talking to the markets is not going to have a communication strategy that is fully aligned

658
01:02:48.560 --> 01:02:56.320
with that. So of course, there's marketing here. But this was a real risk when you have Jerome Powell,

659
01:02:56.320 --> 01:03:01.440
the chief of the Fed, and Scott Bessent, the Secretary of Treasury, looking at this

660
01:03:01.440 --> 01:03:08.400
an immediately calling an urgent meeting of all the CEOs of the banks saying we have to deploy

661
01:03:08.880 --> 01:03:15.920
internally and you have JP Morgan. Jamie Diamond is by far the best at cyber security in terms

662
01:03:15.920 --> 01:03:21.760
of the big banks and the big US institutions. And it considers this a five alarm fire. I take this

663
01:03:21.760 --> 01:03:27.520
very seriously. I think this is actually a big deal that also happens to be useful for end

664
01:03:27.520 --> 01:03:32.480
thropics marketing. Not least because endthropic had just been in a big fight with the defense

665
01:03:32.480 --> 01:03:37.120
department and the US defense department saying we don't want these endthropic guys because like

666
01:03:37.200 --> 01:03:42.960
they're not, they're woke, right? I mean, they don't, they refuse to let us use and deploy

667
01:03:42.960 --> 01:03:47.600
their AI in our targeting or our surveillance. So we're going to take them out of our system.

668
01:03:47.600 --> 01:03:51.600
Well, it turns out you can't afford to take these guys completely out of your system because

669
01:03:51.600 --> 01:03:56.320
what they're doing is too important for American national security. So the timing is convenient

670
01:03:56.320 --> 01:04:01.520
from that perspective. But this risk is real. And it's real because it needs to be deployed

671
01:04:01.520 --> 01:04:08.080
immediately to find these bugs and to patch them before other people have those tools because

672
01:04:08.080 --> 01:04:14.160
other people will have these tools in very short order. And so on the scale of risks that we

673
01:04:14.160 --> 01:04:18.640
have in front of us here, critical severe, yeah, also severe. Okay. Again, it would be critical if

674
01:04:18.640 --> 01:04:22.480
we were talking about two years out because we're talking about this year and it's already April,

675
01:04:22.480 --> 01:04:27.840
it just happened. I would say severe, but my God underappreciated because the amount of attention

676
01:04:27.920 --> 01:04:34.560
this gets on headlines compared to Iran or Venezuela compared to China is still tiny.

677
01:04:35.280 --> 01:04:39.280
And is that because of unemployment because AI is going to take on jobs or is it something else?

678
01:04:39.280 --> 01:04:44.800
Is it the nuclear? What is it? No, I mean, if, if what I just mentioned with Anthropic,

679
01:04:44.800 --> 01:04:52.560
like if suddenly your systems are hackable by anyone that has access to this tool, your markets

680
01:04:52.560 --> 01:04:57.200
are going to go down. Your banks aren't going to work. Your data is going to be stolen. You know,

681
01:04:57.200 --> 01:05:01.520
you're, you're, imagine if the Russians have that capacity, what they would do with it. If the

682
01:05:01.520 --> 01:05:07.920
Iranians today had that capacity, what they would do with it, they will. But these AI tools are

683
01:05:07.920 --> 01:05:14.640
becoming available to anyone with a laptop or a cell phone. So, I mean, suddenly in the same way

684
01:05:14.640 --> 01:05:19.200
that the war in Russia, Ukraine, Russia is much bigger than Ukraine. And yet in the last three

685
01:05:19.200 --> 01:05:23.840
months, Ukraine has actually taken territory back from Russia. How is that possible? Technology

686
01:05:24.560 --> 01:05:31.040
drones, right? They have become the most capable drone producer in the world at scale so much

687
01:05:31.040 --> 01:05:34.960
that when the Iranians were attacked by the United States and they counter hit,

688
01:05:34.960 --> 01:05:39.040
what do the Americans do? They called Zelensky. Remember the guy that didn't say thank you

689
01:05:39.040 --> 01:05:43.920
in the White House? And they said, we have your help with your drone technologies

690
01:05:43.920 --> 01:05:50.320
in figuring out how we combat Iran for our Gulf allies. So, technologies changing the world so

691
01:05:50.320 --> 01:05:55.440
fast and it turns out that the biggest way it's changing our security and the economy is AI.

692
01:05:56.080 --> 01:05:59.680
On this point of AI, I actually was watching a video this morning before you arrived,

693
01:05:59.680 --> 01:06:06.160
which I thought I'd show you because it's quite, it's quite dystopian. But what you'll see in this

694
01:06:06.160 --> 01:06:09.920
video is true and it's happening around the world. And I don't think anybody has any ideas.

695
01:06:10.640 --> 01:06:15.520
This is the video. I'll play it for those of you that are looking at the screen at the moment.

696
01:06:15.520 --> 01:06:16.960
Can you tell what's going on in this video?

697
01:06:19.920 --> 01:06:29.840
From watching it. It looks to me like the work that they are doing is being monitored real time

698
01:06:31.600 --> 01:06:36.720
presumably by some external source. You're going to suggest to me that the external source

699
01:06:36.720 --> 01:06:42.000
that's monitoring them is not a human being, but as artificial intelligence. Yes, kind of. What's

700
01:06:42.000 --> 01:06:48.640
happening is a company has paid these Indian workers to wear cameras on their heads, to watch

701
01:06:48.640 --> 01:06:56.880
their hands, to train the AI so that the AI can do that job in the future to remove the workers

702
01:06:56.880 --> 01:07:01.680
from those jobs. Yes. So it's kind of like sitting on the branch of a tree and you yourself

703
01:07:01.680 --> 01:07:06.400
cutting, there's this meme author up on the screen. It's a guy sat on the branch of a tree and

704
01:07:06.400 --> 01:07:12.160
he's cutting the branch himself. And what you're seeing here is because the AI companies and the

705
01:07:12.160 --> 01:07:17.520
robotics companies need real world data of these jobs being done, then I'm asking the workers

706
01:07:17.520 --> 01:07:21.120
in the factories to wear themselves doing it so that they can replace them. Yeah.

707
01:07:23.280 --> 01:07:28.160
It's I laugh because it's slightly terrifying. It's slightly terrifying and yet it's also

708
01:07:28.160 --> 01:07:33.520
slightly empowering depending on what we decide to do with the wealth that comes from this.

709
01:07:33.520 --> 01:07:41.520
Because let's face it, most human beings do not want that work to be what self-actualized

710
01:07:41.520 --> 01:07:46.000
system. What kind of political system do you need or social system do you need in such a world

711
01:07:46.000 --> 01:07:51.680
where a lot of the work that we do today is being done by these intelligent machines and a huge

712
01:07:51.680 --> 01:07:55.600
amount of people don't have work. I was saying to you before we started recording, a friend of mine

713
01:07:55.600 --> 01:07:59.840
called me the other day and he had had a conversation with one of the most successful technologists in

714
01:07:59.840 --> 01:08:05.120
the world that everybody knows and he said next year is the year where the unemployment because

715
01:08:05.120 --> 01:08:11.840
of AI really will take hold and people are going to get increasingly annoyed. They also said that

716
01:08:11.840 --> 01:08:15.760
they think the Democrats, even though I think this person might be Republican, they think the

717
01:08:15.760 --> 01:08:19.920
Democrats are going to win the election because the impact of AI is going to be so severe next year

718
01:08:19.920 --> 01:08:24.960
in terms of an unemployment that people are going to associate the Republicans with being the pro AI

719
01:08:24.960 --> 01:08:30.400
party. And I saw another report last week saying that AI is now less popular than ice in the United

720
01:08:30.400 --> 01:08:36.160
States. And just as a podcaster who has conversations about this, I know people are not happy.

721
01:08:36.960 --> 01:08:41.120
I know they're not happy. I see in the comments section in part because we don't see it flowing

722
01:08:41.120 --> 01:08:45.920
down and making people's lives better. We see major corporations getting richer.

723
01:08:45.920 --> 01:08:52.800
And so the funny thing that video you showed me, most people in the global south are very excited

724
01:08:52.800 --> 01:08:57.520
and enthusiastic about AI because they think it's going to give them tools to improve their human

725
01:08:57.520 --> 01:09:03.760
capital, to improve their opportunities. China, the Chinese are very excited about AI because

726
01:09:03.760 --> 01:09:10.240
they think that it's going to make their lives better. The Americans, the Europeans are not.

727
01:09:11.040 --> 01:09:16.320
They worry that this is actually going to undermine their jobs, particularly their white collar

728
01:09:16.400 --> 01:09:23.040
jobs, their knowledge worker jobs. And what I think is going to happen politically, I don't agree

729
01:09:23.040 --> 01:09:26.320
that we're going to see massive unemployment in the US next year. I think there's going to be

730
01:09:26.320 --> 01:09:33.200
much more friction and most CEOs don't want to get rid of a lot of their workers unless they have

731
01:09:33.200 --> 01:09:37.520
to. So unless there's a major economic downturn that gives them that excuse, I think it's going to

732
01:09:37.520 --> 01:09:42.720
take a lot longer. And I also think that social mobilization, longshoremen in the United States,

733
01:09:42.720 --> 01:09:46.000
like said, no AI, you're going to protect our jobs. And they were willing to actually demonstrate

734
01:09:46.000 --> 01:09:53.200
they mobilized and it kept AI out. There'll be a lot of resistance that will slow this process

735
01:09:53.200 --> 01:09:58.720
down. But what I do think is going to happen, I think you'll see it politically. I was talking to

736
01:09:59.520 --> 01:10:06.320
someone I know reasonably well, a senator, a US senator who was saying, can't talk right now

737
01:10:06.880 --> 01:10:11.360
and pro technology person, pro business person, centrist, right? Someone you and I would recognize

738
01:10:12.320 --> 01:10:19.280
say, I can't talk about data centers. I've never seen people, my constituents, so upset about an

739
01:10:19.280 --> 01:10:25.920
issue as they do about data centers, AI data centers, they said, no jobs, energy prices going up,

740
01:10:25.920 --> 01:10:30.800
water prices going up, zoning looks horrible in their neighborhoods, they're growing like top

741
01:10:30.800 --> 01:10:36.320
sea, huge amount of investment, everyone hates these things. I mean, Trump in the United States,

742
01:10:37.040 --> 01:10:44.160
one on the back of a lot of men, many of whom had good jobs and were making good money,

743
01:10:44.640 --> 01:10:48.960
but they didn't necessarily have advanced degrees. And they felt like the world was moving away

744
01:10:48.960 --> 01:10:54.320
from them. They saw robotics and automation on their factory lines. They saw free trade and jobs

745
01:10:54.320 --> 01:10:58.960
going to much poorer, much, you know, less expensive labor around the world China, especially

746
01:10:58.960 --> 01:11:02.800
but India other countries. They said, they saw immigrants coming in, but you're not taking care of me

747
01:11:02.880 --> 01:11:07.360
and my family. So why am I letting that happen? You see this in Europe too. This is the Nigel Farage

748
01:11:07.360 --> 01:11:13.840
movement, lots of stuff, right? They voted Trump in, not once, but twice, despite everything he

749
01:11:13.840 --> 01:11:20.560
is, everything he stands for they voted for. We haven't seen women with advanced degrees,

750
01:11:21.120 --> 01:11:27.600
urban and suburban worried about their jobs and worried about their kids. And that wave of

751
01:11:27.600 --> 01:11:34.800
populism is coming, absolutely in 2028. And that is, AI is a very big piece of that. AI

752
01:11:34.800 --> 01:11:39.280
data centers in the rest. So in that regard, I agree that there's going to be a real political

753
01:11:39.280 --> 01:11:45.280
wave here. And I don't yet know who the political figures are that are going to respond to that.

754
01:11:45.280 --> 01:11:50.320
I don't think that person today exists in the political spectrum. I haven't seen that person.

755
01:11:50.320 --> 01:11:55.920
It appears that the least popular job or at least popular people in society at the moment are

756
01:11:55.920 --> 01:12:01.200
AI CEOs. I mean, you've probably seen what what's going on. Well, you saw what Sam Alman just

757
01:12:01.200 --> 01:12:06.560
had a, you know, the, the Maltaf cocktail that was actually thrown at his. And then yes, again,

758
01:12:06.560 --> 01:12:12.160
they said someone shot at his house yesterday, yesterday night again. Yeah. Which obviously nobody

759
01:12:12.160 --> 01:12:17.920
should support violence of this type. My god, no, no, but it's not surprising. And we also had the

760
01:12:17.920 --> 01:12:23.600
CEO of United Healthcare gunned down, you know, a year ago, just a few blocks from where you and I

761
01:12:23.600 --> 01:12:28.960
are having this conversation right now, there is a general anger at the elite. And it's true

762
01:12:28.960 --> 01:12:33.760
that the wealthiest people in the United States right now happen to be those tech owners.

763
01:12:33.760 --> 01:12:38.320
Is there a solution here where the technology which presents us with tremendous potential

764
01:12:38.320 --> 01:12:44.160
upsides can be thriving be successful and make our lives better, but also the average person,

765
01:12:44.160 --> 01:12:49.520
the working class people can also capitalize and benefit from this technology. Of course,

766
01:12:50.000 --> 01:12:54.240
what does that look like? Well, I mean, first of all, these technologies are already doing

767
01:12:54.240 --> 01:13:00.960
extraordinary things in improving productivity and in reducing waste. I mean, recycling doesn't

768
01:13:00.960 --> 01:13:07.760
work very well, but with AI, you can recycle in a way that would allow you to actually get that

769
01:13:08.320 --> 01:13:16.720
trash product back into a productive format who wouldn't want the ability to make micro adjustments

770
01:13:17.360 --> 01:13:24.480
in the way that an airplane is navigating real time because of AI that reduces fuel consumption

771
01:13:24.480 --> 01:13:30.720
by 10%. Or improve agricultural use in Ethiopia, you've got over 100 million people,

772
01:13:30.720 --> 01:13:35.440
and they don't know what to plant and where and when. Suddenly, you optimize for that,

773
01:13:35.440 --> 01:13:42.160
they have cheaper food. But these are amazing things every day. I see uses for these technologies

774
01:13:42.240 --> 01:13:48.720
in companies around the world that blow my mind. But I also see, and again, I focus on politics.

775
01:13:49.440 --> 01:13:53.760
And if we blow ourselves up, it's not going to be because of technology. If we blow ourselves up,

776
01:13:53.760 --> 01:13:59.280
it's going to be because of people and politics. Which we mean by that, that the system

777
01:13:59.280 --> 01:14:06.960
is deploying these technologies in inhumane ways. It's allowing the benefits of the opportunities

778
01:14:06.960 --> 01:14:13.040
to be captured by a small number of individuals, small number of companies that write their own

779
01:14:13.040 --> 01:14:17.920
rules, and don't care about people that are getting angry. So when you ask, violence is the wrong

780
01:14:17.920 --> 01:14:24.400
thing. But if you're seeing that people are getting so angry that they're starting to do things,

781
01:14:24.400 --> 01:14:30.080
that I see the only way that they think that they can respond is outside of the legal framework.

782
01:14:30.080 --> 01:14:35.520
It's not by voting for somebody new, but it's by mass action or even violent action

783
01:14:35.520 --> 01:14:39.200
than the politics are really broken. So do we need like universal basic income or something,

784
01:14:39.200 --> 01:14:45.200
or does that need to be an AI tax or? I don't think that you go from everybody has a full-time

785
01:14:45.200 --> 01:14:52.240
job or aspires to a full-time job to universal basic income in a year. I don't think that happens.

786
01:14:52.240 --> 01:14:59.440
But I could easily see pilot programs that say instead of a five-day work week in the following

787
01:14:59.440 --> 01:15:03.680
areas that we think are going to be disrupted, it's going to be a four-day work week or three-day

788
01:15:03.680 --> 01:15:08.240
work week. And we're going to pay you the same amount of money. But that additional day every week

789
01:15:08.240 --> 01:15:15.280
is going to be on AI training that will allow you to have a job, it need to be more effective in

790
01:15:15.280 --> 01:15:19.440
your existing job because the only the people that know how to deploy these tools are going to have

791
01:15:19.440 --> 01:15:24.240
a job in another three or five years, or will allow you to transition. But you've got to start

792
01:15:24.240 --> 01:15:29.600
spending the money on that now. And that guy that you had that conversation with,

793
01:15:30.160 --> 01:15:35.360
I've been watching him publicly. He's not part of the solution. He's saying, I think the Democrats

794
01:15:35.360 --> 01:15:39.840
are going to win. Oh, well, I'll be fine. I'm still worth a lot of money. But I'm not going to do

795
01:15:39.840 --> 01:15:48.000
anything to actually help facilitate this. Like, if the people that are most capable of being

796
01:15:48.000 --> 01:15:54.320
aware of these challenges and of addressing them are instead all in winner-take-all mode,

797
01:15:55.280 --> 01:16:00.000
then obviously we're going to have a breakdown in society.

798
01:16:01.680 --> 01:16:06.320
It's a tricky situation, isn't it? Because we've seen what happens when governments get involved

799
01:16:06.320 --> 01:16:12.160
in technology. Sometimes, you know, even in the UK, and the European Union, bloody hell,

800
01:16:12.160 --> 01:16:15.920
I remember speaking to, I don't know if I'm permission to say his name either,

801
01:16:15.920 --> 01:16:19.840
but he is the CTO of one of the biggest technology companies in the world. And he was explaining to

802
01:16:19.840 --> 01:16:24.160
me that they can't release their features, this particular piece of hardware. We can't even release

803
01:16:24.160 --> 01:16:30.320
it in Europe because the European Union have so much regulation that they've actually created

804
01:16:30.320 --> 01:16:34.880
a bunch of issues for us as companies. One of them was that in this particular device,

805
01:16:34.880 --> 01:16:40.880
the European Union demand that the battery can be taken out and put back in again. And what this

806
01:16:40.880 --> 01:16:45.120
actually means he was explaining to me is that we're going to have to buy loads of batteries and

807
01:16:45.120 --> 01:16:48.800
keep them on the shelf. And then they're going to go bad. And actually it's going to be worse for

808
01:16:48.800 --> 01:16:53.440
the environment, but also it means that the devices are no longer waterproof. So more devices are

809
01:16:53.440 --> 01:16:58.240
going to break, which is even worse for the environment. And this over-regulation, which means

810
01:16:58.240 --> 01:17:02.640
that the Europeans are nowhere in terms of, they're not competitive. And you know, he said to me,

811
01:17:02.640 --> 01:17:07.040
he goes, and I don't think what the Europeans realize is we just don't need their market anymore.

812
01:17:07.040 --> 01:17:11.120
He said Brazil's coming online, and all these other big markets are coming online as buyers,

813
01:17:11.120 --> 01:17:15.440
so we just can decide just to not sell to Europe. So there are three systems out there,

814
01:17:15.840 --> 01:17:22.480
broadly speaking. One system, the United States system, most power in the hands of the private sector,

815
01:17:22.480 --> 01:17:27.840
so much so that they're able to capture the regulatory process right their own regulations.

816
01:17:27.840 --> 01:17:33.760
That turns out that system drives an enormous amount of growth and wealth. The problem is that

817
01:17:33.760 --> 01:17:39.200
lots of average Americans do not benefit from it, because nobody is looking out for them. Then they

818
01:17:39.200 --> 01:17:45.200
get angry, and then they lash out, right? The Chinese system, where the state actually captures

819
01:17:45.200 --> 01:17:50.320
the private sector, and they say what the private sector can and can't do, and frequently they own

820
01:17:50.320 --> 01:17:56.080
the private sector, state-owned enterprises, right? And that system drives an enormous amount of

821
01:17:56.080 --> 01:18:02.320
growth over the long term, but the people have no say over what is and what is not allowed. And

822
01:18:02.320 --> 01:18:07.520
that creates a lot of dissent in this lying flat. We're not a part of the system and the solution.

823
01:18:07.520 --> 01:18:12.640
Then you have the Europeans. And the European system is very oriented towards

824
01:18:12.640 --> 01:18:17.360
we want to make sure that the social contract works for the citizens. We're very interested in

825
01:18:17.360 --> 01:18:22.720
like having all of the benefits that people need, but we can't afford them because our system

826
01:18:22.720 --> 01:18:27.200
is so heavily regulated, so anti-entrepreneurial, that we don't drive the growth that would be

827
01:18:27.200 --> 01:18:34.080
necessary to keep paying for the people, right? So obviously each of these systems have challenges,

828
01:18:34.160 --> 01:18:39.200
but the problem comes not in the nature of the system, but in when they become extreme.

829
01:18:40.080 --> 01:18:46.880
Americans today want a new deal. Whatever that new deal looks like. And Trump won because of that.

830
01:18:46.880 --> 01:18:53.280
He won because he positioned himself as the outsider that would make sure those things happen,

831
01:18:53.280 --> 01:18:57.680
right? He was the guy that was going to end the wars. He was the guy that was going to invest

832
01:18:57.680 --> 01:19:02.080
in the United States. America first, not these other countries first, people like that.

833
01:19:02.640 --> 01:19:07.280
Take care of your people. That's what they want. People are voting for very simple things.

834
01:19:07.280 --> 01:19:11.360
They want to be taken care of. They want to have opportunities for themselves and their families

835
01:19:11.360 --> 01:19:15.360
and their communities. They don't want to feel despair. That's what the American dream was all about.

836
01:19:15.360 --> 01:19:22.080
That's why my grandparents came here. My grandma, Armenian, your family fled the genocide. She

837
01:19:22.080 --> 01:19:26.880
came on Ellis Island. That's why I'm here. I came and I started a company in a land that had

838
01:19:26.880 --> 01:19:32.480
great opportunity, but most Americans don't believe that applies to them anymore. And you asking

839
01:19:32.480 --> 01:19:38.480
me all these questions about AI, the answer is very simple. Give these people the opportunity

840
01:19:38.480 --> 01:19:43.360
to create a dream for themselves and their families in their own countries. If they don't have that,

841
01:19:43.360 --> 01:19:48.240
they will eventually revolt against you. Is that what history tells us happens next in such a

842
01:19:48.240 --> 01:19:52.160
situation where the people feel more and more powerless and they feel like they have less

843
01:19:52.160 --> 01:19:57.280
and less opportunity. It doesn't happen everywhere. Let's face it, we've got 25 million people

844
01:19:57.280 --> 01:20:05.840
in North Korea that have been ruled by a cult figure who they essentially worship for decades now.

845
01:20:05.840 --> 01:20:11.520
So history doesn't necessarily tell us that the story always goes well. But in democracy.

846
01:20:11.520 --> 01:20:20.000
In a democracy, sometimes democracies go bad, but what we see frequently is push back

847
01:20:20.000 --> 01:20:25.440
against people that are kleptocratic, but it's people that put themselves above the system.

848
01:20:25.440 --> 01:20:29.520
And we've seen that in many cases, in many democracies all over the world.

849
01:20:30.400 --> 01:20:35.120
70% of people who add something to the online cart never actually buy it. And that number is

850
01:20:35.120 --> 01:20:39.040
based on over 10 years of research. But what I think is even more interesting is what the Bay

851
01:20:39.040 --> 01:20:43.680
Mard Institute discovered. There are private research company that ran a study which found the

852
01:20:43.680 --> 01:20:50.240
average e-commerce store can increase its conversion rate by 35% just by making its checkout easier.

853
01:20:50.240 --> 01:20:54.800
Not better marketing or better products, but by delivering a smoother checkout experience.

854
01:20:54.800 --> 01:20:58.720
So if you're looking for an easy way to make your checkout process smoother, I want you to think

855
01:20:58.720 --> 01:21:03.120
about moving your business on to Shopify. It's the platform we use to sell the 1% diaries and

856
01:21:03.120 --> 01:21:08.240
the conversation cards because it's so simple and smart to use. It puts all of our inventory

857
01:21:08.240 --> 01:21:13.280
payments and analytics in one place and has so many AI tools to help us get up and running

858
01:21:13.280 --> 01:21:17.360
straight away. Not to mention that it grows with you regardless of the stage that your businesses

859
01:21:17.360 --> 01:21:23.200
are. So if you're ready to fix your checkout process, sign up for your $1 per month trial at

860
01:21:23.200 --> 01:21:28.960
Shopify.com slash Bartlett. That's Shopify.com slash Bartlett and don't tell anybody.

861
01:21:30.000 --> 01:21:36.160
We have finally caved in. So many of you have asked us if we could bundle the conversation cards

862
01:21:36.160 --> 01:21:40.000
with the 1% diary. For those of you that don't know, every single time a guest sits here with

863
01:21:40.000 --> 01:21:44.160
me in the chair, they leave a question in the diary of a CEO, and then I ask that question

864
01:21:44.160 --> 01:21:48.880
to the next guest. We don't release those questions in any environment other than on these

865
01:21:48.880 --> 01:21:53.520
incredible conversation cards. These have become a fantastic tool for people in relationships,

866
01:21:53.520 --> 01:21:58.080
people in teams, in big corporations, and also family members to connect with each other.

867
01:21:58.080 --> 01:22:03.520
With that, we also have the 1% diary, which is this incredible tool to change habits in your life.

868
01:22:03.520 --> 01:22:08.160
So many of you have asked if it was possible to buy both at the same time, especially people in

869
01:22:08.160 --> 01:22:13.520
big companies. So what we've done is we've bundled them together and you can buy both at the same

870
01:22:13.520 --> 01:22:17.840
time. And if you want to drive connection and then still habit change in your company, head to

871
01:22:17.840 --> 01:22:23.760
the diary.com to inquire and our team will be in touch. I think the part that I still have this big

872
01:22:23.760 --> 01:22:28.720
question mark in my head about is what you do about that. I was reading this morning at Jeff

873
01:22:28.720 --> 01:22:34.000
Bezos' investing or raising money, raising $100 billion for, I think it's called Project

874
01:22:34.000 --> 01:22:40.400
Pemetheus, which is his own AI company. You've got Elon with XAI, you've got Anthropic,

875
01:22:40.400 --> 01:22:45.680
you've got Demis at Google and Sundar, you've got OpenAI, Sam Altman, you've got all these big

876
01:22:45.680 --> 01:22:51.360
tech CEOs that are trying to sort of raise super intelligence, like it's a child.

877
01:22:52.080 --> 01:22:56.880
And if they are to be successful, one would assert that intelligence itself is the most powerful

878
01:22:56.880 --> 01:23:02.240
currency or commodity that there isn't on planet Earth. So those that you will then commodity

879
01:23:02.320 --> 01:23:05.920
is right because Altman talks about you're going to need to pay for intelligence the way you

880
01:23:05.920 --> 01:23:11.680
pay for water. We'll pay for that. And that average American hears that and goes, what? What?

881
01:23:11.680 --> 01:23:15.760
I'm going to have to pay for intelligence. That feels like something we have free will over,

882
01:23:15.760 --> 01:23:18.320
suddenly you don't. Suddenly a company has control over that.

883
01:23:18.320 --> 01:23:25.280
If you had a wand and you could wave the wand and solve this techno oligarchy, what would you do?

884
01:23:25.360 --> 01:23:31.600
I want three things. I want three types of governance. First, I want to make sure

885
01:23:32.880 --> 01:23:38.480
that the United States and China start to have AI arms control conversations.

886
01:23:39.280 --> 01:23:45.200
When we were fighting the Soviets, there were no arms control discussions until after 1962,

887
01:23:45.200 --> 01:23:51.360
Cuban muscle crisis. We almost blew up the entire world. That was super dangerous with much,

888
01:23:51.360 --> 01:23:56.720
much lower levels of technology. And then after that, we said, oh, maybe we should have a hotline

889
01:23:56.720 --> 01:24:00.800
between the two leaders. Oh, maybe we should have deconfliction. Maybe we should not invest in

890
01:24:00.800 --> 01:24:04.720
certain areas. Maybe we shouldn't try to develop Star Wars defense, for example. Maybe we should

891
01:24:04.720 --> 01:24:10.560
have some arms control agreements that limit what we do so that it's safer. We desperately need that

892
01:24:10.560 --> 01:24:15.200
between the Americans and the Chinese. That's number one. Second thing we need,

893
01:24:16.160 --> 01:24:21.680
the financial markets, we all need the financial markets, right? We need them systemically.

894
01:24:21.680 --> 01:24:26.720
When there's a financial crisis, the whole world comes together to get out of the financial crisis.

895
01:24:26.720 --> 01:24:30.240
And it doesn't matter if you're capitalist or communist. The people's Bank of China,

896
01:24:30.240 --> 01:24:35.200
the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Fed, they all work together because they are

897
01:24:35.200 --> 01:24:42.000
first and foremost technocrats who understand that we need the markets to function. You need something

898
01:24:42.080 --> 01:24:48.400
like that for AI. You need an AI stability board so that whenever there is a model that creates a

899
01:24:48.400 --> 01:24:56.560
danger to us globally, like anthropic just did last week, that model is dangerous to all of us globally.

900
01:24:56.560 --> 01:25:02.080
Because any software with the potential bug in it is findable by that model and it can be exploited.

901
01:25:02.080 --> 01:25:07.520
That's incredibly dangerous weapon. So we don't want everyone to have that. So you need at scale,

902
01:25:07.520 --> 01:25:11.600
because everyone's going to develop the stuff. You need an AI stability board like the financial

903
01:25:11.600 --> 01:25:18.160
stability board that is governed by technocrats, by people that have an independent capacity to

904
01:25:18.160 --> 01:25:23.680
identify threats to the systemic environment, the AI environment that we need to work,

905
01:25:23.680 --> 01:25:29.760
that can communicate that to the people that have power and that can immediately attack and address

906
01:25:29.760 --> 01:25:36.560
it. That's the second thing we need. We don't have that yet. The third thing we need is we have to

907
01:25:36.560 --> 01:25:43.920
have an ability to fund AI for people that otherwise would not be able to take advantage of it.

908
01:25:44.480 --> 01:25:50.880
We've got half of Africa that doesn't have electricity. The gap between people with electricity

909
01:25:50.880 --> 01:25:56.080
and people don't have electricity is going to be a hell of a lot worse when it's AI. It's going to

910
01:25:56.080 --> 01:26:02.160
be gap between people that act like empowered human beings, hybrid individuals that have AI as

911
01:26:02.160 --> 01:26:05.920
a principle relationship and can deploy that knowledge, and people that we won't even treat

912
01:26:05.920 --> 01:26:10.480
as human beings. Like a different species or man. Like a different species. That's unacceptable.

913
01:26:10.480 --> 01:26:17.520
We can't allow humanity to develop that way. So we have to spend the money to ensure that everyone

914
01:26:17.520 --> 01:26:21.760
has access. We aren't close to that. What about the domestic economy here in the United States or

915
01:26:21.760 --> 01:26:26.320
in the UK or any of these countries that are developing the taxes? Same as the last point. It's the

916
01:26:26.800 --> 01:26:31.120
UK. So you've got to also fund. Yeah. It can't just be global. I mean, the Americans will not

917
01:26:31.120 --> 01:26:35.520
care about this. This is like their sub-Saharan Africa, though, but whatever. It's them. I'm saying

918
01:26:35.520 --> 01:26:40.640
this is something that is necessary for humanity. But when I looked at our our chemists going around

919
01:26:40.640 --> 01:26:47.760
the moon, we're looking down. I don't see borders. I see 8 billion people. I mean, if anyone that

920
01:26:47.760 --> 01:26:52.240
came down that wasn't being shot up from the earth and came down, anyone that came down to the earth

921
01:26:52.240 --> 01:26:55.840
would look at us and they say, Oh, look at this. They 8 billion people. They don't see borders.

922
01:26:55.840 --> 01:27:01.040
Right? And the first thing they would learn if they learned how we actually operate with our 8

923
01:27:01.040 --> 01:27:06.080
billion people is wow, you guys given the technology you're developing, you have nowhere near adequate

924
01:27:06.080 --> 01:27:11.440
governance for 8 billion people. You guys are all divided into and all of these short term decisions

925
01:27:11.440 --> 01:27:16.640
you're making that are so inefficient and you are you're going to destroy yourselves. That's what

926
01:27:17.040 --> 01:27:22.640
they say. That's what they say. And I say that as a person who is a citizen of the country that

927
01:27:22.640 --> 01:27:27.360
created the United Nations, because we understood the last time we almost destroyed ourselves in a

928
01:27:27.360 --> 01:27:33.920
world war, we can't do that anymore. So we need more global governance. We need more forums that

929
01:27:33.920 --> 01:27:37.360
bring everyone together, not the divided support. We're not heading in that direction right now.

930
01:27:37.360 --> 01:27:41.840
We are not heading in that direction right now. Yes. I mean, we're certainly heading in the

931
01:27:41.840 --> 01:27:46.000
opposite direction in every sense of the world, opposite direction in most senses of the word.

932
01:27:46.080 --> 01:27:52.560
But technologically, one could imagine that we're developing the tools that will help us move

933
01:27:52.560 --> 01:27:56.320
in that direction if we wish to. There is another version of the future isn't there where

934
01:27:57.280 --> 01:28:02.640
sometimes I question whether it's possible because the human condition is so, you know, contaminated

935
01:28:02.640 --> 01:28:09.760
with all of these sort of darker parts of ourselves. But sometimes I wonder if there is like a

936
01:28:09.760 --> 01:28:15.520
version of the future, which is utopia. I don't see how there isn't. I mean, I don't see how you

937
01:28:15.520 --> 01:28:21.680
allow human beings to create the kind of tools that we have and not have the ability to use them

938
01:28:21.680 --> 01:28:27.680
for good. The big stories of the world over the past 50 years, my lifetime, those big stories have

939
01:28:27.680 --> 01:28:33.040
been about growth. Those big stories have been about how human beings are living for longer

940
01:28:33.600 --> 01:28:39.520
with better education and better healthcare and more wealth and less starvation and less poverty.

941
01:28:39.760 --> 01:28:44.320
Those have been the big stories of the last 50 years. Now, you can say maybe it's a blip, but

942
01:28:44.320 --> 01:28:49.920
actually when you look at humans' history on the planet, it's generally moved towards more

943
01:28:49.920 --> 01:28:56.400
capacity. We've just had a couple of really bad episodes and information spread so quickly that

944
01:28:56.400 --> 01:29:00.480
we hear about these bad episodes in a way that we wouldn't have otherwise it feels the algorithm

945
01:29:00.480 --> 01:29:05.360
serving me up. What's going on? 10,000 miles that way. And I worry the most about that. I worry the

946
01:29:05.360 --> 01:29:12.320
most about people getting programmed. I'm not worried about artificial general intelligence.

947
01:29:12.880 --> 01:29:17.520
I'm worried about human beings becoming more computer-like. When you spend all of your time on

948
01:29:17.520 --> 01:29:23.680
your smartphone, that is a computer programming a human being and we're acting more like the

949
01:29:23.680 --> 01:29:28.320
computer when we know that we're not like that. We know that we're more like who we are over the

950
01:29:28.320 --> 01:29:32.880
last few hours. We're sitting here, we're having a conversation with each other. I've never met

951
01:29:33.040 --> 01:29:37.280
you before. We know a bit about each other, but we're having a real conversation. That's a

952
01:29:37.280 --> 01:29:42.800
humane conversation. As soon as it gets intermediate by algorithms, as soon as you get programmed into

953
01:29:42.800 --> 01:29:49.680
a lane, we become much more inhuman. That's why I hate prediction markets. The idea that we're

954
01:29:49.680 --> 01:29:54.880
going to instead of looking at our political institutions has things that we built that serve us.

955
01:29:54.880 --> 01:29:58.720
Instead, we create a casino out of them and we only care about whether we're in or out of the

956
01:29:58.720 --> 01:30:04.160
money that human beings don't operate that way. Companies that want to line their pockets

957
01:30:04.160 --> 01:30:09.760
make us work that way. We're being forced away from being our better selves. We need

958
01:30:09.760 --> 01:30:14.720
regulations and governance models and companies that help us be more of our better selves.

959
01:30:14.720 --> 01:30:18.080
What's interesting is as a podcaster, you sit in this really interesting position where

960
01:30:18.080 --> 01:30:22.240
I don't have like a boss or an overlord telling me who I can interview and who I can't and my team

961
01:30:22.320 --> 01:30:31.200
know me so well now that they would never even mention the implications of me interviewing someone

962
01:30:31.200 --> 01:30:36.480
to me. What I say that is like they would never come to me and say, Stephen, you should interview Ian

963
01:30:36.480 --> 01:30:41.600
but just so you know, this is his politics and if you interview him, these people might scream

964
01:30:41.600 --> 01:30:45.680
at you. They know me so well that they would never even mention it. So I say this to say that

965
01:30:45.680 --> 01:30:49.280
I have the opportunity to be like truly independent and that means that last week we had a

966
01:30:49.360 --> 01:30:53.680
Vonka Trump owner, had Michelle Obama and Michelle Obama and then Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom

967
01:30:53.680 --> 01:31:00.000
and I've interviewed Mem Dhani and it's funny when you sit in this position and you have, you

968
01:31:00.000 --> 01:31:03.200
look at your, you know, the list of people that want to come on the show and that you've asked,

969
01:31:03.200 --> 01:31:10.480
you know, can we reach out to these people and you see every name and yet you know that this

970
01:31:10.480 --> 01:31:17.040
having a conversation because of the algorithms with someone that half my audience don't agree with

971
01:31:17.040 --> 01:31:22.880
is going to cause like real anger, real anger. But like it's what I also find to be really funny

972
01:31:22.880 --> 01:31:28.400
is like when I meet these people in real life that half my audience hates for some reason. Connect

973
01:31:28.400 --> 01:31:33.680
with them. I can see like a lot of the time they have a disagreement about the path but they all

974
01:31:33.680 --> 01:31:38.560
agree on the destination. Well, no one's a villain of their own story. The one thing I would tweak

975
01:31:38.560 --> 01:31:44.160
of what you said, you said because you're independent, you have the opportunity to do what you

976
01:31:44.160 --> 01:31:48.000
want and to say what you want and to interview whoever you want and handle you. I think you have

977
01:31:48.000 --> 01:31:54.960
the obligation. Yeah. In this environment, independence is a responsibility because there are so many

978
01:31:54.960 --> 01:32:00.640
people that are not in your position or my position that aren't independent, that can be fired

979
01:32:00.640 --> 01:32:05.760
and they do not have the same opportunity and an instant, we can't be angry at those people.

980
01:32:05.760 --> 01:32:10.880
We have to recognize that no, no, we are fortunate enough to be independent and if you can't be

981
01:32:10.880 --> 01:32:17.280
fired, we have an obligation to be out there and above the 50% of people that are going to hate

982
01:32:17.280 --> 01:32:21.040
you for whatever reason. Can I ask you a question that do you think I need to say something to the

983
01:32:21.040 --> 01:32:28.320
audience on why this is so important? Of course you do. I think you do that through your conversations

984
01:32:28.320 --> 01:32:33.920
but I think being mindful of it is important. It's about being authentic to who you are. I mean,

985
01:32:33.920 --> 01:32:39.040
you and I may not have exactly the same values. We may not have the same priorities but if you're

986
01:32:39.600 --> 01:32:44.800
being honest about yourself with your audience about what matters. You're doing that through your

987
01:32:44.800 --> 01:32:50.160
podcast, your conversation. It's about never selling out when you do that. It's about never pulling

988
01:32:50.160 --> 01:32:54.240
back and saying, oh no, that might irritate someone so I'm not going to say that's not who you are.

989
01:32:54.240 --> 01:32:58.880
You can't do that, right? Because again, that's what mainstream media does and that's why they're in

990
01:32:58.880 --> 01:33:04.720
trouble. I completely agree and I think it's funny because sometimes I think that the audience might

991
01:33:04.720 --> 01:33:11.040
not understand that but the reality is in the real world when I go outside and I speak to people,

992
01:33:11.040 --> 01:33:16.240
they understand that and they appreciate that. It's just sometimes I think vocal minorities that

993
01:33:16.240 --> 01:33:20.640
really don't want to hear from someone that disagrees with them at all but I just say really vocal

994
01:33:20.640 --> 01:33:27.760
minorities or are they bots or are they really created? When you and I are on the street and people

995
01:33:27.840 --> 01:33:35.440
come up to us and it's overwhelming and it's random. It's overwhelmingly friendly. I think the

996
01:33:35.440 --> 01:33:41.120
digital world is not really a human world and that's why it's so much more important to do more

997
01:33:41.120 --> 01:33:46.320
live. Just get out there, also do more long form. The more that we can do to resist the algorithm,

998
01:33:46.320 --> 01:33:50.960
the better will be as a planet. The better will be as a species. I'm so in love with the idea of

999
01:33:50.960 --> 01:33:55.440
talking to people you disagree with or just have a difference of opinion with. I'm so in love

1000
01:33:55.520 --> 01:34:00.240
by there. I remember reading a quote once that said, if you have the same opinion, if you have

1001
01:34:00.240 --> 01:34:06.320
the same complete set of opinions as one group of people, those are not your opinions. I find that

1002
01:34:06.320 --> 01:34:10.960
to be really, really true because I can still and take ideas and opinions that I agree with from

1003
01:34:10.960 --> 01:34:15.280
almost everybody that I speak to. This is such a strange position to take in an algorithmically

1004
01:34:15.280 --> 01:34:22.320
driven world where the echo chamber will unbelievably reinforce and protect me and just choose a side.

1005
01:34:22.320 --> 01:34:27.440
That's right. Part of my life that resists this is that my view is that if you hold the same

1006
01:34:27.440 --> 01:34:33.760
opinions as the world is changing, you will be wrong. But the algorithm doesn't want you to change.

1007
01:34:33.760 --> 01:34:38.720
Change you. Is there any closing remarks that you have for the listeners based on the journey we've

1008
01:34:38.720 --> 01:34:46.240
been on? I know you're based your Brit. I live in the fungelessness. Yeah, I know, but still. You

1009
01:34:46.320 --> 01:34:51.840
got an accent and I mean, you're global. You're four years old. That's why I write that whole

1010
01:34:51.840 --> 01:35:00.400
start. I mean, the fact is that you've managed to build something global without promoting

1011
01:35:01.360 --> 01:35:06.800
irresponsible lies and hatred and dislike. I don't think you're bad for people. We need more of

1012
01:35:06.800 --> 01:35:15.280
that. When I think about where power is coming from, it's not just tech companies. It's also people

1013
01:35:15.280 --> 01:35:20.800
outside of established political force. When I was a kid, I was, here's what we're talking about.

1014
01:35:20.800 --> 01:35:26.400
That's a second grade. I think my teacher's name was Ms. Critica. She was Greek.

1015
01:35:27.440 --> 01:35:33.360
And she was asking us. We were talking about the elections and she was asking us who wanted to

1016
01:35:33.360 --> 01:35:38.480
be president. And she was talking about what it meant to be president. I'm a reverberation my

1017
01:35:38.480 --> 01:35:41.600
hand, of course, and everyone's talking. I think how cool it would be. And then all of this is

1018
01:35:41.600 --> 01:35:45.920
the, Ian, why would you want to be president? And I looked around and I realized that I was the

1019
01:35:45.920 --> 01:35:50.480
only person that had my hand up, which did not make any sense to me at the time. I would not have

1020
01:35:50.480 --> 01:35:56.400
my hand up today. I thought when I grew up, I really believed that like public service was the

1021
01:35:56.400 --> 01:36:02.400
ultimate expression of how you make a difference. That is no longer true. But it's not because our

1022
01:36:02.400 --> 01:36:08.960
system is so broken and so bad. It's rather that we have created all sorts of opportunities

1023
01:36:08.960 --> 01:36:13.920
for people to really make a difference globally outside of political institutions.

1024
01:36:14.480 --> 01:36:20.640
And I've devoted my life to that professionally. And I think it's incredibly important.

1025
01:36:20.640 --> 01:36:26.480
Right. And maybe people don't all agree with me all the time. Obviously, that's fine.

1026
01:36:26.480 --> 01:36:31.840
But they do know that I really care about what I'm doing. I'm trying to get better over time.

1027
01:36:31.840 --> 01:36:35.680
Right. That's all we can do. And I don't think that has to be, it turns out, I'll go through my

1028
01:36:35.680 --> 01:36:39.600
life and hopefully I'll have a long and healthy life. And I don't think I'll ever have served in

1029
01:36:39.600 --> 01:36:44.560
public office. But hopefully continue to have more and more impact in a good way over time.

1030
01:36:45.360 --> 01:36:49.200
Yeah, I remember hearing Neil deGrasse Tyson say something very similar where he said,

1031
01:36:49.200 --> 01:36:54.000
most powerful people on planet earth are no longer the elected. They are those that influence

1032
01:36:54.000 --> 01:36:58.960
the electorate because they end up going to the polls and making that decision. And so it is a

1033
01:36:58.960 --> 01:37:02.640
huge amount of responsibility in such a world for people like yourself who I do think to a public

1034
01:37:02.640 --> 01:37:05.360
service and educating all of us. I mean, look at all these books in front of me.

1035
01:37:05.360 --> 01:37:08.880
Yeah, unbelievable. How many books you've written and how incredible they will are.

1036
01:37:08.880 --> 01:37:11.120
I don't know how you found them all, but they are out there. Yeah, yeah.

1037
01:37:11.120 --> 01:37:15.200
I'm going to link all of them below. And I would ask my audience to take a look at the

1038
01:37:15.200 --> 01:37:17.280
variety of different. I think this is the most recent one, the panel.

1039
01:37:17.280 --> 01:37:19.360
That's not sure. Yeah. Yeah. Another one coming out next year.

1040
01:37:19.360 --> 01:37:22.000
Two. Yeah. What's the new book? I don't have a title yet.

1041
01:37:22.000 --> 01:37:23.440
Oh, you don't have a title? No. No.

1042
01:37:24.080 --> 01:37:27.920
The power of crisis, how three threats and all response will change the world.

1043
01:37:28.160 --> 01:37:32.320
In this book, you talk more about AI as one of those threats as well.

1044
01:37:32.960 --> 01:37:35.840
But I'm going to link them all below. And I highly recommend people go and follow you both

1045
01:37:35.840 --> 01:37:40.240
on your YouTube channel where you make content frequently about these issues as they're evolving.

1046
01:37:40.240 --> 01:37:43.920
If you want to keep in touch with Ian's perspective and also everyone, your ex-page,

1047
01:37:44.480 --> 01:37:47.200
you've got over a million followers over on ex. I do. Big audience over there.

1048
01:37:47.200 --> 01:37:49.680
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for

1049
01:37:49.680 --> 01:37:52.880
next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is,

1050
01:37:52.880 --> 01:37:59.600
I can't read this. Okay. Can we go? When you are on your deathbed, how will you describe your life?

1051
01:38:01.520 --> 01:38:02.480
Unanticipated.

1052
01:38:05.280 --> 01:38:10.080
Sounds like a good life. Definitely. I mean, you know, let's face it,

1053
01:38:10.720 --> 01:38:15.280
my optimism comes from the fact that we have no idea what we did to deserve being here.

1054
01:38:16.000 --> 01:38:20.480
So every day is kind of like it's a bit of a gift, right? The more you can remember that,

1055
01:38:20.480 --> 01:38:25.680
the more I think the better our fully are. Ian, thank you. I really appreciate all the

1056
01:38:25.680 --> 01:38:29.840
nice things you're doing. I've been watching you for many, many, many, many years. And whenever the

1057
01:38:29.840 --> 01:38:33.200
world descends into turmoil and I'm looking for someone who can turn the lights on for me, you're

1058
01:38:33.200 --> 01:38:36.240
the person that I come to, typically on YouTube, I watch most of your stuff on there, but also

1059
01:38:36.240 --> 01:38:42.080
follow you on ex and find your takes incredibly accessible and demystifying, which is I think

1060
01:38:42.080 --> 01:38:45.200
exactly what we need more of at this time. So you are doing a public service, even though you're

1061
01:38:45.200 --> 01:38:50.240
not running a country, you're helping people like me understand all of this craziness and therefore

1062
01:38:51.120 --> 01:38:56.000
hopefully live better lives and make better decisions as to who we elect and how we think about

1063
01:38:56.000 --> 01:38:59.040
the world and how we treat one another. So thank you for doing that. It's a great service to

1064
01:38:59.040 --> 01:39:03.040
humanity. Well, it's very motivating to hear that frankly and I promise you I'll keep doing my

1065
01:39:03.040 --> 01:39:05.840
thank you.