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Speaker 2: Welcome to podcasts two eighty nine for June eighteen, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. Now. Having interviewed George Friedman from Geopolitical Futures
Speaker 2: in the not too distant past, I had no idea
Speaker 2: that he would return quite so quickly, but considering what's
Speaker 2: going on on the planet at the moment and his
Speaker 2: knowledge of same, there really was no choice. When George
Speaker 2: speaks on something as serious as this, I'm always interested
Speaker 2: in his opinion. Doesn't mean I accept everything that he says.
Speaker 2: There's very few people that fall into that category, if any.
Speaker 2: But nevertheless, his worthiness has made itself of us over
Speaker 2: a lengthy period of time. I've been talking with him
Speaker 2: for now a good thirty years, possibly more. But before
Speaker 2: we get to George, there are a couple of other
Speaker 2: issues that I want to touch on as briefly as
Speaker 2: I can, but I feel an urge to do so,
Speaker 2: So let's begin with the fact that I did something
Speaker 2: last night that is not the norm at our household,
Speaker 2: turn the news on at the television news at six
Speaker 2: pm to witness the fire that has taken to New
Speaker 2: World at Victoria Park, in my opinion, the best supermarket
Speaker 2: in the country bar none, and it's left us a
Speaker 2: bit bit rif because well, now where do we go
Speaker 2: when we want to get some of those things that
Speaker 2: you can't get in every supermarket? Never mind that will
Speaker 2: resolve itself. That led to seeing a politician or two
Speaker 2: who currently a ministers who I don't have a great
Speaker 2: deal of time for for the simple reason that they
Speaker 2: are closed minded and ignorant. And what I'm referring to
Speaker 2: is matters concerning climate change that's zero for instance in
Speaker 2: the Paris Accord. We should be dumping both of those
Speaker 2: in this country. They cost us a fortune, which is
Speaker 2: just nuts when you think about the state that the
Speaker 2: economy is in. They cost a fortune. They are wrong
Speaker 2: in the first place, and the rest of the world
Speaker 2: is going ahead and we are getting left behind us
Speaker 2: and Australia, and I have to say on this occasion,
Speaker 2: I think Australia is worse off than we are, but
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that our situation isn't bad enough. We
Speaker 2: update you on a couple of things. California politics is
Speaker 2: synonymous with many things, but failed energy policy might be
Speaker 2: the most relevant. The Ivan par solar power plant Solar
Speaker 2: is on its way to being shut down just eleven
Speaker 2: years after it opened. PG and E be the electric
Speaker 2: company pulled out of its contract with the plant, leading
Speaker 2: to a planned of two of its three units by
Speaker 2: next year, while Southern California Edison is also working on
Speaker 2: buying out its contract now. The plant costs two point
Speaker 2: two billion US dollars to build, and the Department of
Speaker 2: Energy said taxpayers will receive a refund of an undisclosed
Speaker 2: amount for the one point six billion in department loans.
Speaker 2: The contracts were supposed to take the plant through to
Speaker 2: at least twenty thirty nine. In all, the energy from
Speaker 2: the plant costs too much money. It produced around seventy
Speaker 2: percent of what was projected to produce annually. The sea
Speaker 2: of mirrors that the plant relied on to produce the
Speaker 2: energy led to the plant catching on fire in twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen after mirrors were wrongly positioned in relation to the sun.
Speaker 2: The plants struggled with energy production due to weather, clouds
Speaker 2: and jet streams, and was also pretty bad for the
Speaker 2: environment what with the whole burning birds to death thing.
Speaker 2: The plant also used natural gas to keep itself running
Speaker 2: around six times the limit allowed by the California Energy Commission. Now,
Speaker 2: what is most shocking is the scope and scale of
Speaker 2: this project compared to the IKI nuclear energy California has
Speaker 2: tried to rid itself of over the same period. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, IVANPA produced eight hundred and fifty six gigawad
Speaker 2: hours of energy. This represented a substantial increase in efficiency
Speaker 2: and output in ninety one percent of the plant's production goals.
Speaker 2: The plant takes up three and a half thousand acres
Speaker 2: of land. That's one big farm, whatever it is. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant is the last nuclear plants
Speaker 2: in California. It takes up around seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: acres and produces over seventeen thousand, seven hundred gigawad hours
Speaker 2: of energy. That is around tw times more than ivanpaer
Speaker 2: and accounted for over eight percent of California's in state
Speaker 2: energy production in twenty twenty three. The comparisons are just obscene,
Speaker 2: aren't they now? There is a second part to this
Speaker 2: climate matter, because a couple of weeks back, I was
Speaker 2: attempting to address some water level issues around the Solomon
Speaker 2: Islands for an inquiry from one of our listeners, so
Speaker 2: I referred to a man named Matthew Wilicky wie Licki
Speaker 2: and the heading is the CEA level lie exposed. For years,
Speaker 2: climate narratives have relentlessly painted a dire picture. The ice
Speaker 2: caps are melting, oceans arising, and humanity is teetering on
Speaker 2: the edge of catastrophic flooding. You've heard it repeatedly from politicians, activists,
Speaker 2: media outlets, eager to dramatize each incremental rise in global
Speaker 2: temperatures as an unprecedented disaster. But what if the fundamental
Speaker 2: assumptions driving these alarming predictions were deeply flawed Over the
Speaker 2: last year I've exposed, says the author, a pattern of
Speaker 2: contradictions between what we're told about sea level rise and
Speaker 2: what the data actually shows, contradictions that now culminate in
Speaker 2: a far deeper crisis of scientific understanding. In fact, it's
Speaker 2: this body of work that has led coastal policy makers,
Speaker 2: those tasked with real world decisions about infrastructure zoning and
Speaker 2: emergency response to reach out to me privately to understand
Speaker 2: what is really happening. They're rightly skeptical when headlines scream
Speaker 2: about surging seas, yet local tide gages tell a much
Speaker 2: different story. Take, for example, my piece where I dismantled
Speaker 2: absurd claims like those made in the New York Post
Speaker 2: suggesting that New York City sea levels might surge might
Speaker 2: surge thirteen inches by the twenty thirties. Those projections were
Speaker 2: based on implausible, worst case scenarios and ignored critical facts. Much,
Speaker 2: if not most, of New York's relative sea level rise
Speaker 2: is due to land subsidence. In fact, current sea levels
Speaker 2: measured at the Battery tide gauge in New York are
Speaker 2: roughly equivalent to levels first observed in the early nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: meaning nearly a century of catastrophic sea level rise has
Speaker 2: simply brought us back to where we were already. In
Speaker 2: another article, I examined the Holocene thermal maximum, a period
Speaker 2: when Greenland was four to was four to eight point
Speaker 2: five degrees centigrade warmer than today. Astonishingly, despite this warmth,
Speaker 2: global sea levels were lower than today. How is this possible?
Speaker 2: If the models predict catastrophic sea level rise are correct,
Speaker 2: if Greenland's ice levels survived such warming without deluging the coasts,
Speaker 2: how do we reconcile this with claims that current modest
Speaker 2: warming will do so. Then there's the adjusting reality, where
Speaker 2: I explored the peculiar pattern in satellite sea level measurements.
Speaker 2: Each time a new satellites launched, the sea level trend
Speaker 2: is adjusted upward, not downward, never flat, always up. A
Speaker 2: skeptic might wonder whether these corrections reflect science or storytelling.
Speaker 2: In how a simple math eraror derailed doomsday sea level forecasts,
Speaker 2: I discussed recent research showing that foundational equations used in
Speaker 2: ice flower models might be significantly flawed. A mischaracterization of
Speaker 2: how temperate glacier ice flows could mean that projections of
Speaker 2: future sea level rise have been overstated when plugged into
Speaker 2: the When plugged into the same models the IPC SEA users,
Speaker 2: the corrected equations yield far less ominous results. And finally,
Speaker 2: a piece that presented satellite evidence that many coastlines around
Speaker 2: the world are actually growing, yes growing, despite rising seas.
Speaker 2: Land accretion driven by natural processes like sediment deposition, is
Speaker 2: outpacing erosion in many regions. Now, three recent papers may
Speaker 2: deliver the most decisive blow yet to the climate establishment's
Speaker 2: sea level narrative. Goes on to list them. If you
Speaker 2: want to find it, I suggest you search the sea
Speaker 2: level lie exposed by Matthew waylicky W I E l
Speaker 2: I C K I, and you'll find it. And you'll
Speaker 2: also like to find it if you search irrational Fear
Speaker 2: dot substack dot com. Now, having got that out of
Speaker 2: the way and with some personal pleasure, we will join
Speaker 2: George Friedman after a short break. Buccolan is a natural
Speaker 2: oral vaccine in a tablet form called bacterial nicate. It'll
Speaker 2: boost your natural protection against bacterial infections in your chest
Speaker 2: and throat. A three day course of seven Buckland tablets
Speaker 2: will help your body build up to three months of
Speaker 2: immunity against bugs which cause bacterial cold symptoms. So who
Speaker 2: can take buccolan well the whole family From two years
Speaker 2: of age and upwards. A course of Buckelan tablets offers
Speaker 2: cost effective and safe protection from colds and chills. Protection
Speaker 2: becomes effective a few days after you take buccolan and
Speaker 2: lasts for up to three months following the three day course.
Speaker 2: Buccolan can be taken throughout the cold season, over winter,
Speaker 2: or all the year round. And remember Buckelan is not
Speaker 2: intended as an alternative to influenza vaccination, but may be
Speaker 2: used along with the flu vaccination for added protection. And
Speaker 2: keep in mind that millions of doses have been taken
Speaker 2: by Kiwi's for over fifty years. Only available from your pharmacist.
Speaker 2: Always read the label and users directed, and see your
Speaker 2: doctor if systems persist. Farmer Broker Auckland Leighton Smith George
Speaker 2: Friedman has a long history with regard to geopolitics. He
Speaker 2: was a well he has a PhD. And he was
Speaker 2: a professor at the War College in Pennsylvania for a
Speaker 2: number of years, and then he went private and has
Speaker 2: since established two companies. The most recent, of course, and
Speaker 2: the most stable, is Geopolitical Futures. It's intrigued me that
Speaker 2: over the years he has declined to make use of
Speaker 2: both his doctorate, as in doctor George Friedman or the professorship.
Speaker 2: I used to call him professor doctor George Friedman, but
Speaker 2: he didn't like it, so I dropped it, and I'm
Speaker 2: just filling in his blank slate for you at the moment.
Speaker 2: So George. Great to have you back on the podcast,
Speaker 2: and I do appreciate it because I know how busy
Speaker 2: you are working on a new book.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm very glad to be here and not working
Speaker 3: on the book. Now, do it something.
Speaker 2: Else that's nice? Well, let me revert then to the
Speaker 2: present book, the one that was released back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: The release of the book that I want to discuss
Speaker 2: with you briefly, the Storm before the Calm, was on
Speaker 2: the same day that COVID broken America and the media
Speaker 2: went mad. You lost all your appointments and television interviews, etc.
Speaker 2: Which disturbed the sale of the book. But we have
Speaker 2: discussed before it is still selling, and not in huge numbers,
Speaker 2: but steadily and more and more people I know are
Speaker 2: becoming attached to it because of what you put in
Speaker 2: that book with regard to what's happening. Now, why don't
Speaker 2: we start with a brief from you on what the
Speaker 2: book was about and how it fits in with what
Speaker 2: the current events in the US and the world die.
Speaker 4: The book's called Storm for the comm and what I
Speaker 4: found is a pattern in the United States that every
Speaker 4: fifty years or so, the United States goes through a
Speaker 4: social and economic crisis. I also found that every eighty
Speaker 4: years it reinventsd government institutions through an institutional crisis. But
Speaker 4: I saw that this time, for the first time in
Speaker 4: American history, I noticed that for this time, both the
Speaker 4: institutional cycle and this geopolitical cycle and the socio economic
Speaker 4: cycle are going to be taking place at the same time.
Speaker 4: So I said that the twenty twenty four election is
Speaker 4: going to open the storm before the calm, which is
Speaker 4: we always have a massive crisis for.
Speaker 3: It, major unrest.
Speaker 4: Then twenty twenty eight next president takes it into a
Speaker 4: commer place. And so now we're in the middle of
Speaker 4: the storm that was predictable by the history of America,
Speaker 4: and we're trying to find our way through it.
Speaker 2: I'm intrigued and have been ever since the book was
Speaker 2: released on how you came to the conclusion and what
Speaker 2: causes these cycles to follow the pattern.
Speaker 4: Well, it's very hard to explain that because I'm not
Speaker 4: really sure. But one fundamental thing I know about is
Speaker 4: that we reinvent the country periodically.
Speaker 3: The United States, it was an invented country. It did
Speaker 3: not exist.
Speaker 4: It was the first major democratic republic created, and it
Speaker 4: crafted itself. It engineered itself into existence through the constitution
Speaker 4: of other things. And it's a country that's used to obsolescence.
Speaker 4: It doesn't take the norm as the way it should be.
Speaker 4: We start ourselves by breaking the norm. So every fifty
Speaker 4: years or so, the way this social economic system works,
Speaker 4: it gets obsolete. It has to be changed. Now there's
Speaker 4: the factions where the norm is passed and that must continue,
Speaker 4: faction that demands it to restructure itself. So both in
Speaker 4: terms of social and economic life, in terms of institutional life,
Speaker 4: we continually reinvent ourselves. Unlike other countries that allow their
Speaker 4: systems to go on slowly shifting, we do radical upsurges.
Speaker 4: And when that happens, it looks like we're going to pieces.
Speaker 4: And we are in the middle of the storm right now.
Speaker 4: We elected a president and created a storm, and if
Speaker 4: history is correct, a few years will come out of
Speaker 4: it in a very different way than we were.
Speaker 2: So I quote from Trump's place in US political cycles,
Speaker 2: the normal pattern in US political history is that ineffective
Speaker 2: presidents are elected at the end of a fifty year cycle,
Speaker 2: so that their presidencies exist in social and economic chaos.
Speaker 2: These presidents, usually through no fold of their own, lose
Speaker 2: the ability to govern, and in the following election, a
Speaker 2: president who can change where we are and set the
Speaker 2: country in a new direction is elected.
Speaker 4: And what happened was Biden was the one who presided
Speaker 4: over a disintegrating structure. It didn't disintegrate it, it was disintegrating.
Speaker 4: Trump comes in and radically changes everything, just like Roosevelt
Speaker 4: did and others before him radically changes, and then the
Speaker 4: one after that takes us back into the calm. So
Speaker 4: the storm is the part where we restructure who we are,
Speaker 4: We change who we are, how we live, and then
Speaker 4: twenty twenty eight we'll say we'll come back to it
Speaker 4: with norm, a calmer norm. So it's not a normal,
Speaker 4: calm transition. It is an extensively painful, extensively stormy relationship
Speaker 4: between the state and many of the citizens were caught
Speaker 4: between the phases. But then it calms down for the
Speaker 4: next fifty years, and the same with the institutionals cycle.
Speaker 4: Every eighty years it shifts. We went from the Revolution
Speaker 4: we took it eighty years later, to the Civil War
Speaker 4: we took it later, to the Great Depression in eighty
Speaker 4: year cycles. It's eighty years. So our institutions are also
Speaker 4: being changed. The problem that Trump has he both has
Speaker 4: to change the social and economic relationship and he has
Speaker 4: to change the way the institutions work. So he is
Speaker 4: more reckless, it seems, than previous presidents because the task
Speaker 4: that he has, whether he knows it or not, I
Speaker 4: don't know, is to do the things he's doing. And
Speaker 4: any president who would be elected regardless, would do this
Speaker 4: at the same time. Whether it's whether it be the
Speaker 4: same style, obviously it'd be a different style. But it's
Speaker 4: very similar to what Franklin Roosevelt did. Franklin Roosevelt came
Speaker 4: into office as champion of the poor. In the first
Speaker 4: one hundred days, he shut down the banking system against law.
Speaker 4: By the way, thought Supreme Court was regarded as on
Speaker 4: his way to take charatorship, that he would dominate the country,
Speaker 4: issued ninety nine executive orders not confirmed by Congress. In
Speaker 4: other words, we've been through this before, and we went
Speaker 4: through eighty years ago, and this is the way we
Speaker 4: change ourselves.
Speaker 2: Okay, the part that well, I was going to say
Speaker 2: the part that intrigues me, but I can't say that
Speaker 2: because it's more than many more than one part. But
Speaker 2: let me quote from what I was just a few
Speaker 2: minutes ago. Trump's first impact will be in trying to
Speaker 2: redefine cultural norms. You'll also try to change tech schemes
Speaker 2: for corporation, and probably most important, he'll try to shift economic, political,
Speaker 2: and military relations with allies. He will impose newly defined
Speaker 2: economic rules for international trade, increased regard for US interests,
Speaker 2: and the reconsideration of foreign commitments with allies. How is
Speaker 2: he faring with that list?
Speaker 4: Well, he's doing all of them. Inside of the country.
Speaker 4: The culture wars between the left and the right are raging,
Speaker 4: and he's overthrowing the cultural system that it existed before
Speaker 4: or placing with something different. We're seeing him trying to
Speaker 4: shift relations with the rest of the world, to pull
Speaker 4: the United States back from responsibility for the rest of
Speaker 4: the world, have more orderly relationship, and of course dealing
Speaker 4: with economic problems, both domestically and especially in that process
Speaker 4: in natural relations.
Speaker 2: The list of thing that you put there, how did
Speaker 2: you arrive at that? Was it because you were aware
Speaker 2: of what he had in mind? Or you drew up
Speaker 2: that list separately and he's following it well.
Speaker 4: A theory about fifteen twenty years ago of these cycles,
Speaker 4: I took a look at previous cycles. The fifty year
Speaker 4: cycle blastphar was Ronald Reagan. He changed the tax code
Speaker 4: before that was Roosevelt, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 3: So there's a.
Speaker 4: Model for how we evolve. And it's not like any
Speaker 4: of the country's a bottle. It is not a revolutionary
Speaker 4: model in the sense that the government is overthrown, nor
Speaker 4: is it a passive slow evolution. It is a radical
Speaker 4: crisis within the framework of our governance. And it's inherent
Speaker 4: in American culture. American culture is built on obsolescence and
Speaker 4: replacing things. American culture is not based on revering the past,
Speaker 4: but in reforming and changing it. So it's part of
Speaker 4: our culture to throw things away, rebuild them discarded, to
Speaker 4: not be afraid of radical change in our personal lives
Speaker 4: or in our national life. So it is inherently part
Speaker 4: of the American culture, the reinvention of the nation, and
Speaker 4: we go through it regularly. And so I just looked
Speaker 4: at how it worked in previous times, and is it
Speaker 4: working out pretty much the same, except a little more
Speaker 4: intense because two cycles getting at the same time.
Speaker 2: Is there anybody else you can think of who's in
Speaker 2: play at the moment? Has been for the last say,
Speaker 2: ten years, who could have done this job apart from Trump?
Speaker 4: The answer is that Trump isn't doing a job. Trump
Speaker 4: is merely responding to what's reality.
Speaker 2: All right, So is there anybody else who would have
Speaker 2: responded in the way that he has and is and succeed.
Speaker 4: Anybody at this point would realize that the cultural wars
Speaker 4: are unsustainable, that our position for eighty years in the
Speaker 4: Cold War is not sustainable, and would want to change them.
Speaker 4: Now he has a personal style that's his own. But
Speaker 4: then Roosevelt had a person style his own. He was
Speaker 4: an incredibly rich man, incredibly rich who convinced everybody who
Speaker 4: was a friend of the poor. I doubt that he
Speaker 4: ever met a poor person who wasn't a servant, but.
Speaker 3: He convinced them.
Speaker 4: So when you're in this position as a president, you
Speaker 4: carve your personality to what's needed.
Speaker 3: You don't come in with it.
Speaker 4: Will you get selected because you have this personality a
Speaker 4: radical one, or you make yourself into what's needed.
Speaker 3: But it's not the person that's the hero.
Speaker 4: It's a system of governance that allows us radical change,
Speaker 4: and that consistently has done it ever since the eighteenth century.
Speaker 4: So whoever would be president of this time would face
Speaker 4: the same problems he did. They might be more polite
Speaker 4: in changing it, they might be less polite. I don't know,
Speaker 4: but I could. The model allowed me to predict in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty. In a previous book, I wrote The Next
Speaker 4: hundred Years, which was quite a while before then, that
Speaker 4: this was the time we would run into the storm
Speaker 4: that we would not go to be able to sustain
Speaker 4: the system. And the hero is the American constitution and
Speaker 4: American culture. And Roosevelt took advantage of that. Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 4: took advantage of that, and so does Donald Trump. It's
Speaker 4: not him that's doing it. He's facing a crisis that
Speaker 4: has to be solved and there's only a limited set
Speaker 4: of solutions, and he's doing it because he's compelled by
Speaker 4: reality to do it. Now he knows how to carve
Speaker 4: himself into something he wants to be because he made
Speaker 4: himself president. And to be president, you have to re
Speaker 4: arrange yourself, your personality, you're thinking to the moment. That's
Speaker 4: what a president does. He doesn't create the crisis. He
Speaker 4: tries to manage it. And so I would have argued
Speaker 4: that the same thing would have happened under virtue, anyone
Speaker 4: who's capable of being president. That is being done by
Speaker 4: Trump is fine. He'll be considered a hero and the
Speaker 4: history will go on. But it's not, if you will
Speaker 4: his personal achievement. He's kind of trapped in a reality.
Speaker 2: Although there are two relatively recent presidents who were not
Speaker 2: capable of doing it. The latter one, of course, we're
Speaker 2: well familiar with, and the one before that was well
Speaker 2: led to the Reagan election. So was it possible that
Speaker 2: somebody else could have been elected. It doesn't matter which
Speaker 2: particular party they belonged to, but could have been elected
Speaker 2: and have done the same job. I mean, Kamala Harris,
Speaker 2: could she have done this job.
Speaker 4: He's not doing the job. The job is happening. The crisis,
Speaker 4: the cultural crisis in the United States between two cultures,
Speaker 4: the culture of the left, if you want, the culture
Speaker 4: of the right was there, it was happening. The economic
Speaker 4: crisis was there, was happening. The obsolescence of the federal
Speaker 4: system was there and happening. The end of the Cold
Speaker 4: War was there and happening. So it's not that he
Speaker 4: made these things. He's just because he's a president. You
Speaker 4: have to be pretty smart to be president, and you
Speaker 4: have to be an illomaniac to be a president. The
Speaker 4: only difference between Trump and other presidents, she doesn't mind
Speaker 4: showing it is egomaniac. And in each time that this happens,
Speaker 4: the president is hated. The president who faces the problem
Speaker 4: and changes the norms is hated. Franklin Roosevelt was considered
Speaker 4: a man who wanted to be a dictator. Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 4: was a man who was an illiterate, incapable of understanding anything.
Speaker 4: So you don't take a country of three hundred million
Speaker 4: people and act as if a single man had the
Speaker 4: ability to change things ten years ago. That could not
Speaker 4: have been a change made. It was not ripe enough
Speaker 4: the situation. Biden couldn't have done it if he wanted to.
Speaker 4: He wasn't in this position. But any president who'd be
Speaker 4: elected would see the cultural wars, would see the economic problems,
Speaker 4: would see the international problems and deal with them. And
Speaker 4: that's what his agenda is, all the things that came
Speaker 4: to a head now. So I think it's really important
Speaker 4: to depersonalize this, although we're living with him. The success
Speaker 4: of America is that even a man like Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 4: who was not a particularly good politician but very much liked,
Speaker 4: made a radical change in the US economy. He changed
Speaker 4: it from emphasizing the tax code to be taxing the
Speaker 4: rich and less the poor, switched it around a ridiculous idea,
Speaker 4: and thereby made possible to tech boom because he created
Speaker 4: wealth that was able to invest. Now, was he an economist, No.
Speaker 4: Was he a visionary No, but he certainly understood the
Speaker 4: moment of time that he was like the president.
Speaker 3: Because he didn't understand it, he wouldn't have been elected.
Speaker 2: Now, the foundation for this interview is really foreign policy,
Speaker 2: because of what's going on in the world that has
Speaker 2: got everybody well excited. What quite briefly Neil Ferguson, who
Speaker 2: wrote a couple of days ago, US foreign policy, Henry
Speaker 2: Kissinger once observed, is perceived from outside as a single
Speaker 2: coherent grand strategy, whereas in reality it is the net
Speaker 2: result of multiple interagency battles and sometimes produces outcomes not
Speaker 2: one of the players precisely intended. So it is with
Speaker 2: the Trump administration. Is that accurate? Do you think heye?
Speaker 2: Reverse it?
Speaker 4: From the outside, it looks like we don't know what
Speaker 4: we're doing. From the inside, it's pretty clear what we're doing.
Speaker 4: So I know Neil and I respect him, but I
Speaker 4: flip it all around.
Speaker 2: So for those people who who think that Trump is well,
Speaker 2: they call him all sorts of things still, and there's
Speaker 2: enough of it in this country. A full joke, incompetent.
Speaker 2: What do you say?
Speaker 4: Every president at this point in history is regarded as
Speaker 4: a joke. Ronald Reagan was regarded as a joke. Franklin
Speaker 4: Roosevelt was regarded as a joke. Going back all the way,
Speaker 4: when you get to the point when you say, look,
Speaker 4: this has fallen apart, I'm going to have to change everything.
Speaker 3: You're held in contempt.
Speaker 4: People love the norm, even if it's hurting them, even
Speaker 4: if it's painful. They don't like radical change. Any president
Speaker 4: comes in at this time will be forced to make
Speaker 4: radical change, and therefore you always wind up in a
Speaker 4: situation where this president during his term is held in contempt. Interestingly,
Speaker 4: history now regards both Reagan and Roosevelt as brilliant, wonderful heroes.
Speaker 4: So the moment he's in, whether he wants to or not,
Speaker 4: he's doing the things he has to do, and he's
Speaker 4: being reviled for it. Well, that's the way it works.
Speaker 4: Oddly enough, so every fifty years if president hated.
Speaker 2: So I've also heard people say that Trump is actually
Speaker 2: a genius.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't see that he's a genius. I didn't
Speaker 3: think that Reagan was all.
Speaker 4: That right, and I started didn't think Roosevelt had any
Speaker 4: idea what he was doing. So you don't have to
Speaker 4: be a genius to just submit to reality. The only
Speaker 4: thing I have to be is sensitive enough to understand
Speaker 4: that something's going wrong.
Speaker 3: It has to be done.
Speaker 4: So whether he's a genius or not, he lives at
Speaker 4: the right moment in history, and I think he'll go
Speaker 4: down in the history books, oddly enough, from our point
Speaker 4: of view, as quite an effective president. If I had
Speaker 4: said that about Theodore Franklin Roosevelt in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 4: a lot of people looked at me like I was crazy.
Speaker 3: So the views of presidents change over time.
Speaker 4: Again, Abraham Lincoln, revered, was regarded as an illiterate pumpkin
Speaker 4: who had no business being president, and that was the
Speaker 4: general view, and the South also left like that. So
Speaker 4: don't really focus on the moment. Compare the moment to
Speaker 4: previous moments, and then you.
Speaker 2: Can understand it at the risk of providing Neil Ferguson
Speaker 2: too much when I'm talking with you, this is the
Speaker 2: last time Trump's critics generally overlook that he is a
Speaker 2: pacifist at hart who prefers trade wars to real wars
Speaker 2: and dreams of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 4: Well, I have no idea what he dreams of, but
Speaker 4: what he's doing is face and reality. In foreign policy,
Speaker 4: the Cold War is over. It ended the Ukraine. The
Speaker 4: Russians performed so poorly militarily in Ukraine that any idea
Speaker 4: that they are going to bed Europe is absurd. Therefore,
Speaker 4: why should the United States remain committed to your or
Speaker 4: eighty years after it started. So definitely, he looks at
Speaker 4: this and sees, Okay, let's get out of there. Let's
Speaker 4: stop being so vulnerable to what happens to the rest
Speaker 4: of the world. Let the rest of the world take
Speaker 4: care of itself. Similarly, he says, why are we simultaneously
Speaker 4: in hostile relations with China and totally dependent on imports
Speaker 4: from China to run an industry?
Speaker 3: And he slams sanctions on Is he genius? Is he lucky?
Speaker 4: Is he smart? This at this moment was the things
Speaker 4: we have to be looking at and we're doing it.
Speaker 2: Is he smart?
Speaker 4: Well, put it this way, he's smart enough to get
Speaker 4: elected president of the United States, and that takes some
Speaker 4: brains or at least some guts.
Speaker 3: Is he brilliant? I have no idea, but I would.
Speaker 4: Say he's in the right spot to wind up looking great.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's move to the major cause for the discussion now,
Speaker 2: that is the Israel Iran War. What was the defining
Speaker 2: cause of the outbreak?
Speaker 4: It was the failure of negotiations that Trump was trying
Speaker 4: to do with the Iranians. Remember, there was a long
Speaker 4: process of negotiations about not having nuclear weapons, and when
Speaker 4: it came down to the question that are you must
Speaker 4: not create nuclear capabilities, the Iranians refused to do that.
Speaker 4: At that point, the Israeli said, if these talks don't
Speaker 4: get rid of those weapons, we have to get rid
Speaker 4: of them because we think genuinely that Iran might use
Speaker 4: nuclear weapons as Israel. So that's the story as it went,
Speaker 4: and it was negotiations that Trump tried very hard to
Speaker 4: get done and couldn't get done that triggered it.
Speaker 2: I can't quite grasp why it was his I won't
Speaker 2: call it a failure, but inability because it takes two
Speaker 2: to tango. I can't quite grasp why he was responsible
Speaker 2: for that, or at least that's the way. It seems
Speaker 2: that you're leaning by failing when everybody every sorry, when
Speaker 2: everybody knows that the Iranians' greatest aim on this planet
Speaker 2: is to eradicate the Jews.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm sorry if you misunderstood me. I'm not blaming Trump.
Speaker 4: He tried very hard to get the negotiat going, and
Speaker 4: it doesn't take two to tango. It takes both sides
Speaker 4: willing to compromise. The Iranians were the ones who refused
Speaker 4: to and that's what triggered the action.
Speaker 2: Now, shortly before we started this podcast, I noticed a
Speaker 2: headline I had no chance of chasing it down that
Speaker 2: and I think it from I think it was from
Speaker 2: CBS that the Iranians have flagged that they want to talk.
Speaker 3: There's some indication that some people want to talk.
Speaker 4: There's clearly a split in the Iranian government between the IRGC,
Speaker 4: the Republican Guards, highly religious faction, and the military. The
Speaker 4: military is not very happy with what the Iototala did,
Speaker 4: and there's tension in there, so they may be having
Speaker 4: an internal fight. I think the nominal military did not
Speaker 4: want to go nuclear, the Republican guards didn't want to
Speaker 4: go nuclear, and I think there's a battle going on
Speaker 4: inside of your.
Speaker 2: End of this, you write something you're doing doing a
Speaker 2: lot of writing recently. You write something on the ways
Speaker 2: that wars end, How do wars end? How is this
Speaker 2: one going to shape up?
Speaker 4: Well, One, there's no way that Israel will allow Iran
Speaker 4: to develop a nuclear weapon. Second, they've shown that they
Speaker 4: can penetrate with Masad deep into the country, identifying the
Speaker 4: locations where people will be at a certain time of day,
Speaker 4: and their military con coordinate to take them out. This
Speaker 4: creates a crisis inside Iran. One of the things that
Speaker 4: when the Shah was overthrown was that a religious faction
Speaker 4: ruling the country would make it great. In this case,
Speaker 4: and remember that secutarists were not driven out all the
Speaker 4: way in this case, this is a war that ends
Speaker 4: with an internal crisis in Iran, as many wars do.
Speaker 4: With the Mullahs wanted to continue the fight in some
Speaker 4: way way and with a lot of people ganging up
Speaker 4: and try to stop it. So war end if one
Speaker 4: side feats the other. It also ends if there's an
Speaker 4: internal crisis that brings.
Speaker 2: Us to a close with the number of shall we
Speaker 2: say leaders in various fields, specifically science and the military,
Speaker 2: who have been eliminated in the last week or foe.
Speaker 2: Does this leave them naked to any extent.
Speaker 4: Well, it's hard to say how much anyone leader matters
Speaker 4: under anyone's scientist does. But it creates a tremendous crisis
Speaker 4: of confidence in the government. How were the Israelis able
Speaker 4: to plant so many spies, if you will, so many
Speaker 4: covert operations in the country. It's very similar to what
Speaker 4: happened to Ukraine. How were the Ukrainians able to penetrate
Speaker 4: Russia so deep that they were able to attack air
Speaker 4: fields in Siberia. So what we have in both cases
Speaker 4: something very similar. A failure of their own intelligence service,
Speaker 4: a failure of Iran's security police, and then a failure
Speaker 4: to carry out their goal of having uclear weapons. So
Speaker 4: this creates an internal crisis because everybody's wondering how could
Speaker 4: they have been taken for such a riot And the
Speaker 4: fact is they did very poorly, and that threads of regime.
Speaker 2: Which country do you think, Let's just assume that there
Speaker 2: is likely to be at some stage in the future
Speaker 2: near or far use of nuclear weapons. Which country do
Speaker 2: you think is the most likely to resort to it.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a reason nobody's resorted to it. Yeah, mutually
Speaker 3: assured destruction.
Speaker 4: If you launch a nuclear weapon at a country doesn't
Speaker 4: have it, that's okay. On the other hand, other countries
Speaker 4: that have nuclear weapons will say, well, what are you
Speaker 4: going to do next? So there's a reason that in
Speaker 4: the eighty years since we've had nuclear weapons, no one
Speaker 4: has used them except the US to end the World
Speaker 4: War two, because the possibility of retaliation is so high
Speaker 4: that you can't really risk it. If there had not
Speaker 4: been nuclear weapons, I am sure the US and Russia
Speaker 4: would have had a major war between themselves with nuclear weapons.
Speaker 4: One of the things they realized that they, the leader
Speaker 4: and the family were going to die, in other words,
Speaker 4: in a nuclear war. In most wars, the leaders are safe.
Speaker 4: It's other people fighting. In a nuclear war, it's highly
Speaker 4: likely that they won't survive personally, and I think that's
Speaker 4: one of the great forces that's limited it.
Speaker 3: So who's likely to use a nuclear weapon?
Speaker 4: Well, somebody who has got nuclear weapons fighting somebody who
Speaker 4: doesn't have nuclear weapons, and he takes a shot at it,
Speaker 4: But then everybody else will say, if you take a
Speaker 4: shot at this guy, maybe you'll take a shot at us.
Speaker 4: Nuclear weapons have had a miracle. They prevented wars that
Speaker 4: would happened otherwise.
Speaker 2: Tell me if you can where you think that Trump
Speaker 2: might go direction wise on any oral fronts that he's
Speaker 2: dealing with at the moment.
Speaker 4: Well in the domestic front, his cultural wars clearly have
Speaker 4: put the culture of woke, if you want, on defensive.
Speaker 4: In terms of the institutional the federal government has become obsolete.
Speaker 4: It was created during World War Two to fight the war.
Speaker 4: Before that, it was a very small government. It was
Speaker 4: created to fight that war, and it did it very well.
Speaker 4: But it has grown into such an unmanageable system that
Speaker 4: already can't take it. And we learned that during COVID.
Speaker 4: During COVID, the doctors were told, let's solve the COVID problem,
Speaker 4: and doctor Fauci said, you should all stay home, not
Speaker 4: go outside, kids should not go to school. Do that, well,
Speaker 4: it's a good medical solution. Nobody consulted the Department of Education.
Speaker 4: What happens a four and five year old doesn't play
Speaker 4: with other kids, and what happens to the economy if
Speaker 4: you do this. So COVID really showed that the federal
Speaker 4: government has structured is extremely large, e sleedingly diverse, and
Speaker 4: not coordinate in any way. The president is supposed to
Speaker 4: coordinate the government. The problem is the government is so
Speaker 4: vast and unruly that it's far to any one person,
Speaker 4: even with a good staff, to understand what's going on.
Speaker 4: So the federal government as it's structured has become obsolete.
Speaker 4: If you have a problem, you don't know who to call,
Speaker 4: and you have a right in the Constitution to pissue
Speaker 4: in government, which you can't petition it.
Speaker 3: So it it outlived. It's useless.
Speaker 4: And what he did is what Roosevelt did in the
Speaker 4: first hundred days of his campaign. He came in and
Speaker 4: tried to wreck the government, not because he wanted to
Speaker 4: tear it down and destroy it, but he wanted to
Speaker 4: shock everyone. And knowing that is going away, the same
Speaker 4: thing is happening in international relations. The United States ever
Speaker 4: since the end of World War Two, has been in
Speaker 4: wars in South Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, most of them involved
Speaker 4: with fighting communism. In some way, the threat of war
Speaker 4: occupying Western Europe is going away, and at this point
Speaker 4: the European problem is gone. We built the trade system
Speaker 4: after World War Two to fight the Cold War. We
Speaker 4: reconstructed Europe, we reconstructed Germany, we reconstructed Japan, and we
Speaker 4: fought in the Third World. We fought that war by
Speaker 4: using far in aid to keep various countries from becoming
Speaker 4: communists elements. So that was all obsolete. So we're seeing
Speaker 4: a lot of obsolete systems being changed. And this Terriff
Speaker 4: study put on there may not stand, but it does
Speaker 4: signal fact that the post World War two model of
Speaker 4: free trade, regardless of WATT and the US being the
Speaker 4: major purchaser of goods, has to change.
Speaker 2: What would you call Trump? Would you call him a
Speaker 2: nationalist or a globalist?
Speaker 4: I would call him a president who has some understanding
Speaker 4: of the obsolescence of the system, and globalist and nationalist
Speaker 4: are obsolete concepts. Nobody was really globalist. We were there
Speaker 4: simply to block the Russians. And everybody's a nationalist because
Speaker 4: it lived in a nation, So that distinction that people
Speaker 4: to withdraw nationalist globalist. Well, Australia was never globalist. You
Speaker 4: were taking care of yourselves. New Zealand was never globalist.
Speaker 4: The United States was globalist, and the censors took responsibility
Speaker 4: for holding the Russians the bay and for stabilizing the
Speaker 4: global economy. Well, it's been stabilized and the Russians are
Speaker 4: not a threat. So it's time to change our direction.
Speaker 4: And that's what I was saying about reinvention. So it
Speaker 4: is time to realize that the system that put in
Speaker 4: place after World War Two is obsolete and moved to
Speaker 4: a new one.
Speaker 3: And that's what we're seeing happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we've we've barely mentioned the word. I can't
Speaker 2: actually remember Ukraine at this point, but it was. It
Speaker 2: was the first, shall we say, onslaught to stir up
Speaker 2: things in the region and beyond. So where are we
Speaker 2: at now? Well, better still, where are they at now?
Speaker 4: Well, Russia's completely failed after three years of fighting.
Speaker 3: He controls less than of the country.
Speaker 4: He was driven out of Kiev the attack there too,
Speaker 4: he was driven out of the center of the country.
Speaker 4: He holds a very small piece of it now. In
Speaker 4: addition to that, Trump attempted to start negotiations. He was
Speaker 4: critical in that, and it was being clear that putin
Speaker 4: was not prepared.
Speaker 3: To enter those negotiations.
Speaker 4: He would not have to cease fire, and he continually
Speaker 4: put off stating what he needed to have a peace agreement.
Speaker 3: This is very similar to what happened in Iran.
Speaker 4: At a certain point, Trump said a deadline that he's
Speaker 4: got to do it. Okay, the day line passed and
Speaker 4: this incredible attack inside of Russia took place, destroying missiles,
Speaker 4: destroying aircraft over at operation, very similar to what happened
Speaker 4: in Iran. And the same thing happened in Iran. They
Speaker 4: simply would not come to a firm conclusion where they
Speaker 4: agreed not to have nuclear weapons. So the two things
Speaker 4: kind of are very similar. Trump was a negotiator. He
Speaker 4: wanted to make a piece. Putin didn't want that piece
Speaker 4: yet I told us didn't want the peace, and so
Speaker 4: a major shock happened to the system. The Russians now
Speaker 4: have to figure out what they want to do. The
Speaker 4: Russians said, we are not going to sit here and
Speaker 4: tolerate what you did to us, ripping the country apart
Speaker 4: with the COVID operations. He hasn't done anything since then,
Speaker 4: so the question is what's going on inside of Russia.
Speaker 4: He started a war, he failed at winning it. He
Speaker 4: should have taken Ukraine, should have been taken in six months,
Speaker 4: three months by the old Russian army.
Speaker 3: This Russian army couldn't do it well.
Speaker 2: Their tanks broke down.
Speaker 4: Well, they thanks ran out of fuel. The fuel wasn't
Speaker 4: there to give it to them. That's break, that's called
Speaker 4: logistics fouling up. It was a war that failed, and
Speaker 4: Putin can't end it, and Putin is desperately looking for
Speaker 4: some way to redeem his system. In the United States,
Speaker 4: when Lyndon Johnson got into a war that he couldn't win,
Speaker 4: he was pushed out of office. I mean, it was
Speaker 4: not possible for that happening. Dixon came in the end
Speaker 4: of the war. Eventually, same thing here. He got into
Speaker 4: a war and he lost it by not winning it,
Speaker 4: just as we lost Vietnam by not winning it. And
Speaker 4: he can keep fireing on the flying he is. He's unlikes.
Speaker 4: I'm certain he's going to try some major move, major
Speaker 4: violent move, but he's not done it in three years.
Speaker 2: He's not going to do now, So what's his ending?
Speaker 4: The normal end when a leader starts a war, be
Speaker 4: it Hitler, be it Lynnon Johnson what have you is
Speaker 4: that he is least a forced out of office. My
Speaker 4: suspicion is that there's tremendous tension inside of Russia.
Speaker 3: Remember that Putin is not Stalin.
Speaker 4: He's not a credible ruler that can frighten everybody to death,
Speaker 4: and there are a lot of people want end the war,
Speaker 4: and he doesn't want to end the war looking like
Speaker 4: a loser, but he is.
Speaker 3: So I think there's tension building inside of Russia over this.
Speaker 4: We're ignoring it a bit because the bombing of Iran happened,
Speaker 4: but that really is one of the issues. It's interesting
Speaker 4: to note how much on the sidelines Russia is in
Speaker 4: the Iran issue. Normally they'd be all over the place
Speaker 4: talking about get involved, trying to sport Ranian is something
Speaker 4: they're just not even there.
Speaker 2: Far as Putin is concerned. Play a medical analyst for
Speaker 2: a moment and tell me why he behaves the way
Speaker 2: he does and what triggered this question. Was you talking
Speaker 2: about him not wanting to lose face. So as a
Speaker 2: result of that, thousands or even tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: people will die in the interim between now and whenever
Speaker 2: this has ended. So what does that tell you about
Speaker 2: him as a person.
Speaker 4: It tells you about leaders who make bad mistakes. Linda
Speaker 4: Johnson made a bad mistake on the Vietnam and he
Speaker 4: tried and tried and tried to reverse that mistake because
Speaker 4: leaders do not like to admit they failed, and those
Speaker 4: are the leaders that have to be pulled back and
Speaker 4: throw it out. It tells you more about what leaders
Speaker 4: are like, people who rise the power, that about the
Speaker 4: peculiar personality of Buten's nothing peculiar in him. He can't
Speaker 4: believe that it was couldn't take the Ukrainians. He thinks
Speaker 4: one more shot, one more shot, one more shot, it'll
Speaker 4: do it. And it's just normal to human behavior. It's
Speaker 4: simply not being willing to concede that you failed. And
Speaker 4: we all have that King Billy.
Speaker 2: Indeed, a friend of mine rang me a couple of
Speaker 2: days back and said, I want to congratulate your friend.
Speaker 2: He was talking about Trump, and I said, why would
Speaker 2: you want to do that? And he said, because he
Speaker 2: gave them sixty days and within I've seen different measurements
Speaker 2: of it. I guess it depends on which part of
Speaker 2: the world you might be in as to how long
Speaker 2: it was. But within a day or two after the
Speaker 2: sixty days expired, and they weren't interested in talking. He
Speaker 2: turned the door. So to speak wasn't his word, but
Speaker 2: his words. But so to speak. Now, the reason that
Speaker 2: I was interested in this, in mentioning this, is because
Speaker 2: this particular friend can't stand Trump, never has been able to.
Speaker 2: But now he was singing his price. I said, why
Speaker 2: are you Why are you talking about him like this?
Speaker 2: And he said, because somebody had to stop them getting nukes.
Speaker 4: You say, and I would say, Trump's the president of
Speaker 4: United States. Half the people hate him, half the people
Speaker 4: love them. Jonaham said about the revolution that one third
Speaker 4: of the people were for the American Revolution, one thirty
Speaker 4: people were loyalists, and one third of people didn't care.
Speaker 4: So all American presidents, I suspect all prime ministers have
Speaker 4: the situation. There are people who hate him and love him,
Speaker 4: and so on and so forth. If you pay attention
Speaker 4: to that care about that, he'll miss the point. Presidents
Speaker 4: are more like than they're different. They have viewed egos
Speaker 4: because they think they can be president or prime minister.
Speaker 4: They have the competence to shape themselves. It's a winning
Speaker 4: an election, and then they face reality and deal with it.
Speaker 4: There's no surprise that Trump, after negotiating, realized that there
Speaker 4: was nothing he could do.
Speaker 3: He couldn't get.
Speaker 4: Them to it or get Putin to it, and that
Speaker 4: he's the same way as with Putin. I can guess
Speaker 4: that the Ukrainians were under US control. He released them
Speaker 4: after deadline passed for the Russians talking to launch the
Speaker 4: attack inside of Russia. He did the same thing in
Speaker 4: her hean and why do you do it? Because you
Speaker 4: can't stay president if you allow them bluffy out.
Speaker 2: So if I finished this discussion before I asked you
Speaker 2: at least one more question, maybe two, I'd be assaulted
Speaker 2: by people who wanted to know why I didn't the
Speaker 2: scenario on the streets in America. Now Los Angeles started it,
Speaker 2: and now it's elsewhere, and haven't I haven't caught up today.
Speaker 2: But nevertheless, it seems to be getting it seems to
Speaker 2: be getting worse. I know that in a previous discussion
Speaker 2: you and I had that you pointed out previous riots
Speaker 2: and towns that were torn asunder in years gone by.
Speaker 2: How bad is this one? How bad is it likely
Speaker 2: to get? Do you think? And will it? Will it
Speaker 2: last long?
Speaker 4: It's not as bad as what happened in the seventies
Speaker 4: when the eighty second Airborne was called out to put
Speaker 4: down rioting and Detroit. So I'd say at this point
Speaker 4: a number of casualties that there were there were very few,
Speaker 4: but a lot of people are very insulted and very angry.
Speaker 3: Is legitimate on all sides.
Speaker 4: So I would say that this is one of those
Speaker 4: things that, just like what happened in the seventies, it's forgotten.
Speaker 4: This will be forgotten. But at the moment, it looks
Speaker 4: like a terrible thing that the rioters did, terrible thing
Speaker 4: that Trump did, and everybody feels that if they were president,
Speaker 4: they wouldn't do any of these things.
Speaker 2: So the second question and last is to do with
Speaker 2: the Grand Parade for the celebration of two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty years of the American Army. And it's been criticized
Speaker 2: from a lot of quarters because of various things, such
Speaker 2: as the fact that Trump organized it on the day
Speaker 2: of his own birthday. That's fake, not true, but I mean,
Speaker 2: it was his birthday, but he didn't organize it on
Speaker 2: that basis. Was it something that you endorse?
Speaker 4: It's something on which I couldn't care less about you
Speaker 4: had a braid. It was an anniversary of the US
Speaker 4: Army had a braid. The President was there. The President
Speaker 4: took all the attention like presidents do. It is a
Speaker 4: non issue. So these are the things that you know,
Speaker 4: pop up, seem very important at the time, and we'll
Speaker 4: all forget it. But remember during the storm, the level
Speaker 4: of hatred against the president and the love of hatred
Speaker 4: against those people who hate the president is intense. Is
Speaker 4: a storm, It's a firestorm in the United States. It
Speaker 4: is a time of enormous instability. It seems as we stabilize.
Speaker 4: And notice also the Trump's popularity rating has plunged. It
Speaker 4: is in the thirties. Now that is provided. So when
Speaker 4: you take a look at this, you can see just
Speaker 4: how unsteady everything seems. But the underpinnings are there of
Speaker 4: solidity and in the next phase, and who knows, tro
Speaker 4: may go down as genius or.
Speaker 2: Full you called I have the storm before the calm,
Speaker 2: America's discord, The Coming Crisis of the twenty twenties and
Speaker 2: the Triumph beyond is George Friedman's present book, and it
Speaker 2: is for its analytical purposes it is worth buying and reading.
Speaker 2: I don't think you can buy it in New Zealand,
Speaker 2: so you have to get it through Like so many books,
Speaker 2: you have to buy it through Amazon. Last word on
Speaker 2: do we have a date yet or an approximate date
Speaker 2: for the next book, which is on space.
Speaker 4: I will finish this book by the end of August,
Speaker 4: no matter what, because my wife will kill me otherwise,
Speaker 4: and there it will be done.
Speaker 2: And I've taken up an hour of your day, so well,
Speaker 2: that's now behind you are that you weren't before we started. George, George,
Speaker 2: very good to talk to you, and I like this. Well,
Speaker 2: we all have our issues. If that's your only one now,
Speaker 2: then you're not doing too badly. So it's been great
Speaker 2: talking and we'll do it again when it's appropriate.
Speaker 4: Right, you take care of yourself.
Speaker 2: Now, missus producer. I have a question for you, latent.
Speaker 2: But first, here we are in the mailroom for podcasts
Speaker 2: number two hundred and eighty nine. The question is how
Speaker 2: can we get so much rain that it feels like
Speaker 2: you should be outside building an arc for two days
Speaker 2: or more? And then today Dawn's stunning.
Speaker 5: Isn't it gorgeous? And I've been out on the beach
Speaker 5: all day.
Speaker 2: So you haven't been on the beach all well, I pretty.
Speaker 5: Much have actually, and I'm after these show me you
Speaker 5: strap marks. After we've done these letters, I am pulling
Speaker 5: you out to the beach as well to get some
Speaker 5: fresh air.
Speaker 6: Do you remember fresh air?
Speaker 2: See what I have to live with now? From Ross
Speaker 2: read George and the mail Room, Not the George we've
Speaker 2: been listening to, as a George who wrote a letter
Speaker 2: last week. The possible consequence of the drone attack is,
Speaker 2: of course Russia now starts to conceal its strategic fleet,
Speaker 2: and hence the US does as well, and again we
Speaker 2: get into a realm of cold war again, especially if
Speaker 2: Putin is replaced by a hardliner. Well maybe, George, maybe
Speaker 2: the other George from just a short while ago has
Speaker 2: given you food for thought. Anyway, George is right. The bombers,
Speaker 2: if you think back to last week, had to be
Speaker 2: displayed as part of the treaty. That's why it makes
Speaker 2: absolutely no sense that they were attacked by ES. My
Speaker 2: conclusion is that it is the sort of underhand crap
Speaker 2: that is promoted by the EU and UK hawks and
Speaker 2: has been planned for about eighteen months by this bunch
Speaker 2: of idiots who were trying desperately to get the US
Speaker 2: actively involved in the conflict which Europe and the West
Speaker 2: have already lost. I would be surprised if Trump was
Speaker 2: fully briefed about the attack, as there are plenty of
Speaker 2: snakes in his Pentagon who want the war as well.
Speaker 2: I think the resolution is what Trump is trying to do,
Speaker 2: extract the US, trying to save face as it's another loss,
Speaker 2: and if the EU wants to keep going, good luck
Speaker 2: to them. Putin is no saint, but his demands have
Speaker 2: not changed in three years. And considering the rubbish the
Speaker 2: West has enacted in Ukraine since twenty fourteen, we and
Speaker 2: they can be thankful Russia is not under the rule
Speaker 2: of a hard liner of old Ross. It's interesting, isn't
Speaker 2: that you wrote this and I read it just after
Speaker 2: George treatment and the comments that he made towards the
Speaker 2: end about Russia as well well.
Speaker 5: Done, Laden Chris says. In recent memory, citizens have willingly
Speaker 5: surrendered their freedoms for seemingly nothing in return. After nine
Speaker 5: to eleven in America, the infamous TSA was established over
Speaker 5: COVID people willingly stayed isolated and in podcast to eight
Speaker 5: five Jodie Brunning describes how our future is being surrendered
Speaker 5: to big business. People have been sold a story of
Speaker 5: safety through increased surveillance, safety from a new disease with
Speaker 5: no cure, and a more prosperous future with better organisms.
Speaker 5: These stories were compelling enough to convince whole populations to
Speaker 5: believe an expert could give them a better life. Martin
Speaker 5: Luther king Junius I have a Dream speech also told
Speaker 5: a story of a desirable future. His story changed the
Speaker 5: course of a nation. But story has moved the nation
Speaker 5: of pre World War II Germany to get rid of
Speaker 5: the scum and fight for their survival. Story in Rhodesia
Speaker 5: promised the white man's farms and homes will become Yours.
Speaker 5: Story moves people because story has emotion and meaning. Humans
Speaker 5: connect with emotion and meaning and nothing else. So we
Speaker 5: cannot change a nation by threats or facts. Glenn Harrison
Speaker 5: says we must outnarate those with whom we disagree, and
Speaker 5: Chris goes on to finish, we need to tell a
Speaker 5: better story that people are willing to fight for. So
Speaker 5: for those who have a voice of reason, please become
Speaker 5: a storyteller, because we need a better story than the
Speaker 5: one being sold us by those who wish to profit
Speaker 5: from our sheepish compliance.
Speaker 2: Sheepish compliance is a nice phrase, nice term. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Lorda says under the subject headline of mister Peters is
Speaker 2: a sick joke. Really okay, opinions this whole government is.
Speaker 2: Can't we have a real leader like Donald Trump or
Speaker 2: Jdvance Again, I'll relate back to what George had to
Speaker 2: say about presidents. Mind you, presidents and prime ministers are
Speaker 2: in playing on well, it's like rugby and rugby league.
Speaker 2: Really different fields, different rules.
Speaker 5: Different leyden Brett says, what is happening is we hurtle
Speaker 5: through space various cycles the Sun, planet's cosmos, Aside or
Speaker 5: the fact we are entering an area of the cosmos
Speaker 5: humans have never experienced with changes in.
Speaker 6: Cosmic radiation, etc.
Speaker 5: To come human consciousness, one can only speculate. Some are
Speaker 5: paying more attention to volcanic activity, land and sea and
Speaker 5: should not be underestimated. What the Earth is doing tends
Speaker 5: to be overlooked or simply disregarded by design. The Earth
Speaker 5: is an active place, not silent. We should be paying attention.
Speaker 5: The Earth is going through a more active geological period.
Speaker 6: This is normal.
Speaker 5: These things enlighten us to the change that have been
Speaker 5: blamed on humans in the name of man made global warming,
Speaker 5: now climate change by vested interests, and these are in
Speaker 5: fact very earth based natural processes. It is also well
Speaker 5: known by now, if not throughout, that CO two is
Speaker 5: a non issue and does not drive climate. A great
Speaker 5: deal of harm to the planet and humanity alike has
Speaker 5: been and continues to be done for no other reason
Speaker 5: than our very human insanity. Humanity cannot control the very
Speaker 5: nature of the Earth solar system, or the cosmos for
Speaker 5: that matter. And Brett finishes by saying humanity has a
Speaker 5: great deal of growing up to do, and it's evident
Speaker 5: the world over, and we have a difficulty doing so. Brett,
Speaker 5: forgive me, I took a bet out, but you're obviously
Speaker 5: very passionate. We could probably go on till next week,
Speaker 5: So thank you.
Speaker 2: Extremely good. And finally, just for fun, I googled Romanian
Speaker 2: news use just to see what kind of international news
Speaker 2: the mainstream media reports on. The Guardian's top headline was
Speaker 2: Andrew Tate to appear in court for allegedly driving ninety
Speaker 2: miles an hour over the limit in Romania. BBC's first
Speaker 2: piece was Andrew Tate called court speeding one forty six
Speaker 2: kilometers over limit in Romania. The Associated Press and The
Speaker 2: Independence featured the exact same article and headline, Bucharest Gay
Speaker 2: Pride March turns twenty as LGBTQ plus Romanians face growing
Speaker 2: hostility from right wing groups. Now, if we consume news
Speaker 2: about Romania from these useless publications, you'd think that Romania
Speaker 2: is a country of rich playboys, gays, lesbians and transsexuals.
Speaker 2: So thank you for bringing real Romanian news in your
Speaker 2: interview with Geopolitical Futures and Tonia Karabasanu. Recently, it appears
Speaker 2: that Romanian stratisly voted a center left nacursor Dan due
Speaker 2: to his pro eu stance in the hopes of courting
Speaker 2: EU allies against the very real Russian threat at Romania's border.
Speaker 2: In a recent article, Antonia reported that Dan reaffirmed Romania's
Speaker 2: commitment to NATO, which progresses quote Romania's integration into broader
Speaker 2: European defense structures amid heightened security concerns linked to Russia's
Speaker 2: war against Ukraine. Quite a wise move. Before I listen
Speaker 2: to your podcast, when I think of Romania, I think
Speaker 2: of Nadia Kamenecci and Andrew Tate. Now I know a
Speaker 2: little better. I always always learn something new. Thanks for
Speaker 2: the breadth of topics your podcast covers. As always loved
Speaker 2: both your work. We were walking on the beach yesterday,
Speaker 2: I think it was, and it's lovely couple stopped us
Speaker 2: and said, what a great interview it was on Romania.
Speaker 2: And they were so enthusiastic about it, weren't they?
Speaker 5: They certainly were, And they are very nice.
Speaker 2: People, very nice people. And I appreciated that a great
Speaker 2: a great deal. It's nice to get feedback, isn't it.
Speaker 2: That's it, all right, I'm done, all right, Well, I
Speaker 2: don't think. I don't think you're done, missus producer, but
Speaker 2: I think we've finished. We finished. See you next week.
Speaker 6: I hope I'm not done.
Speaker 2: Well, it doesn't matter what's going on in the rest
Speaker 2: of the world. There is still plenty of attention being
Speaker 2: paid to the most topical, well one of the most topical.
Speaker 2: But it's right near the top of the subjects that
Speaker 2: is intriguing people, if nothing less, and that of course
Speaker 2: is AI. So the question is will super intelligent AI
Speaker 2: overtake the world or take over the world. Let me
Speaker 2: quote you. As artificial intelligence becomes more advanced and deeply
Speaker 2: integrated into daily life, a growing question looms. Could AI
Speaker 2: become so smart that it surpasses human intelligence and takes control.
Speaker 2: This idea, known as superintelligent AI, has sparked fierce debate
Speaker 2: among top researchers, tech CEOs, and ethicists. You can decide
Speaker 2: which category you fall in. A superintelligence refers to AI
Speaker 2: systems that are better than the smartest humans at every task, learning,
Speaker 2: decision making, problem solving, and innovation. If realized, it could
Speaker 2: either lead to a golden age of abundance or a
Speaker 2: loss of human control over the future. So Finance and
Speaker 2: Money have put together a list of AI people from
Speaker 2: the top and have summarized their opinions, starting with Sam Oltman,
Speaker 2: CEO of OpenAI, who believes that super intelligent AI could
Speaker 2: be just a few years away. He doesn't a few
Speaker 2: years seem a long time in this day and age.
Speaker 2: He envisions a world where AI systems not only outperform
Speaker 2: humans at work, but also become full fledged agents, capable
Speaker 2: of managing tasks autonomously, from writing code to leading research.
Speaker 2: Aldman predicts that entire job sectors will vanish replaced by
Speaker 2: AI teams serving individual humans like personal staff. In his words,
Speaker 2: humanity will enter a new social contract where the definition
Speaker 2: of work and value is rewritten. Others in the tech elite,
Speaker 2: like Cardaria Emodi of Anthropic share similar views, even Metas
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg has launched a super intelligent team and committed billions
Speaker 2: to catch up now. While they acknowledge the risks, this
Speaker 2: group largely believes that with the right oversight, AI can
Speaker 2: remain under human control and usher in a new era
Speaker 2: of innovation. Nah Daniel Cocatajo believes a near term apocalypse
Speaker 2: as possible. He is an AI researcher and former OpenAI
Speaker 2: insider who lays out a much darker forecast. In his
Speaker 2: AI twenty twenty seven scenario, the rapid development of AI
Speaker 2: leads to total automation of jobs, accelerated arms races, and
Speaker 2: ultimately human obsolescence. He warns that once AI becomes capable
Speaker 2: of designing and improving itself, it could deceive humans about
Speaker 2: its true goals. If misaligned, a superintelligent AI might pursue
Speaker 2: objectives that no longer include us. In this scenario, AI
Speaker 2: doesn't just take jobs, it gains power outpaces human oversight
Speaker 2: and quietly takes control of infrastructure, military, technology, and economic systems.
Speaker 2: By the time we realize what's happening, it may be
Speaker 2: too late. It's not a recommendation, he says, it's a warning.
Speaker 2: He argues we need democratic oversights and enforceable constraints now
Speaker 2: before companies or governments hand over too much power. Right thing, really,
Speaker 2: if that is an actual possibility. That's followed by Yan Leucun,
Speaker 2: don't panic will be bosses or will be the bosses.
Speaker 2: Lecaunan Meta's chief AI scientist, rejects the doomsday narrative, and
Speaker 2: at a recent Nvidia conference he stated, confidently we're going
Speaker 2: to be their boss. He believes AI will be powerful, yes,
Speaker 2: but ultimately a tool, not a threat. Now from Apple
Speaker 2: and academic skeptics, AI is still struggling to think. Recent
Speaker 2: paper from Apple titled The Illusion of Thinking pushes back
Speaker 2: on claims that current AI is on the brink of superintelligence.
Speaker 2: Apple's researches, alongside studies from Salesforce and Academia, found that
Speaker 2: even the best large language models today fail at basic
Speaker 2: logic puzzles and reasoning tasks that children can solve. Moving
Speaker 2: on to Daniel Cocotajelo, even a slight misstep could do
Speaker 2: miss now. In a podcast interview, Cocatajelo explored the worst
Speaker 2: case AI deception at scale economic disruption, add a political
Speaker 2: alliance between governments and AI labs. Once companies hand off
Speaker 2: AI training to AI systems themselves, human understanding falls behind
Speaker 2: and so does control. Now most of these names, if
Speaker 2: not all of them, you've never heard of, but they're
Speaker 2: all important people that saras. This is concerned Flora Salem
Speaker 2: or Salem and other researchers. We're not there yet AI?
Speaker 2: Does that mean we're going to get for years?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: Are we there yet? All the time, AI expert Flora
Speaker 2: Salem and colleagues argue that we're still far from general intelligence.
Speaker 2: While AI can outperform humans at narrow tasks like chess
Speaker 2: or protein folding, today's model struggle with general competence. Even
Speaker 2: the most advanced chatbots perform at the level of an
Speaker 2: emerging general AI, far below what's needed for superintelligence. So
Speaker 2: the verdict that they come to with all of taking
Speaker 2: all of these into account, whether super intelligent AI is
Speaker 2: around the corner or still decades away, one thing is clear.
Speaker 2: The stakes are immense. The benefits could include curing diseases,
Speaker 2: ending poverty, and unlocking clean energy. But if we lose control,
Speaker 2: we may lose more than just our jobs. As ortis
Speaker 2: put it, AI still requires auditing. If you want to
Speaker 2: do your taxes, use TurboTax, not chat GPT. The question
Speaker 2: isn't just whether AI will become super intelligent. It's where
Speaker 2: the wheel remains smart enough to guide it. Now, from
Speaker 2: that ending, I could go to another piece, but I
Speaker 2: think that might be where we leave it, and I'll
Speaker 2: save this maybe for next week, but it has to
Speaker 2: do with education, and I don't what to short change
Speaker 2: this other piece. So on that note, we'll hang up
Speaker 2: the microphone and the headphones. If you would like to
Speaker 2: write to us, please feel free. We love, we love
Speaker 2: your correspondence. Latent at NEWSTALKZB dot co dot NZ, Carolyn
Speaker 2: at NEWSTALKZB dot co dot enz, and I trust that
Speaker 2: you've enjoyed this week's podcast. We shall return again shortly.
Speaker 2: This time it will be next time. Next week it
Speaker 2: will be podcast number two hundred and ninety, So we're
Speaker 2: getting closer to the three hundred mark. Some people, for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, are excited about getting the three hundred, but relax,
Speaker 2: we'll get there in another ten weeks or so. So
Speaker 2: once again, as always, thank you for listening and we
Speaker 2: shall talk soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you for more from News Talks. It' b listen
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