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Speaker 2: So the mass spread of flock cameras across the country
Speaker 2: has increasingly become an issue of deep concern to Americans.
Speaker 2: There's one organization that has sprung up called Deflock, which
Speaker 2: you can go to their website and you can see
Speaker 2: a map of where all the flock cameras are located.
Speaker 2: They're doing sort of standard First Amendment advocacy against the
Speaker 2: spread of this surveillance technology. Flo CEO was asked about
Speaker 2: this group and he labeled them as a terrorist organization.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3: You've got organizations like the ACLU and the FF who
Speaker 3: take an above a board approach to fight for their
Speaker 3: point of view. And thankfully we live in a beautifully democratic,
Speaker 3: capitalistic country where we can fight in court, and I
Speaker 3: have a lot of respect for those groups because they
Speaker 3: have reasonable debates and we follow the law. And then
Speaker 3: unfortunately there's terroristic organizations like dflock whose primary motivation is chaos.
Speaker 3: They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else,
Speaker 3: and now I think is unfortunate because we don't want chaos,
Speaker 3: or I don't want chaos. I like law and order,
Speaker 3: like a society that has a better rock of safety.
Speaker 3: So for those groups, I think it's just disappointing that
Speaker 3: they haven't chosen a more constructive minnerism to try to
Speaker 3: get what they want, which they have a right to have.
Speaker 3: But that's why we have a democratically elected process, right
Speaker 3: Like we're not forcing flock on anyone. Elected officials know
Speaker 3: that as a community, you want to be safe.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is complete insanity, Sager, but it also
Speaker 2: fits into the rhetorical and legal framework that the Trump
Speaker 2: admin has set up. It's not an accident that he
Speaker 2: named tex Antifa here because they've used NSBM seven and
Speaker 2: other tools to try to go after these left wing
Speaker 2: groups that they label as terrorists, and so he adopts
Speaker 2: that language to try to you know, put deflock in
Speaker 2: the same category as these other groups that have been
Speaker 2: identified by the Trump administration as terrorists. But literally, you
Speaker 2: can go to their website, the tagline says welcome to
Speaker 2: deflock and open source Project Mapping license plate readers, Like,
Speaker 2: that's just a basic service and advocacy group that is,
Speaker 2: you know, being provided to the public so that they
Speaker 2: can push back on what's happening in their communities where
Speaker 2: they've had very little.
Speaker 1: Say yeah, I think this is absolutely insane, and it's
Speaker 1: pretty obvious that this CEO first of all, dflock is
Speaker 1: a nonprofit organization, So if you're going to say that
Speaker 1: it's you know, terroristic or whatever, frankly, they should be
Speaker 1: able to sue if they want to, because you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just say sorry. So genuinely, I mean, like
Speaker 1: that's an actual term which has meaning. It's a nonprofit organization,
Speaker 1: which is open source, which allows people just to flag
Speaker 1: where flock cameras actually are. By that definition, weighs as
Speaker 1: a terrorist organization because it lets you flag where police
Speaker 1: officers are whenever they're trying to speed trap you. So
Speaker 1: let's start with that the second thing. And you know
Speaker 1: I said this, I got such an angry message from
Speaker 1: a right wing friend of mine where I said, I
Speaker 1: genuinely would trust a place like China or Singapore to
Speaker 1: surveil me and to a master avail me, then I
Speaker 1: would Flock. And I'm about to show you why is
Speaker 1: because it is a for profit company with very sketchy
Speaker 1: ability to actually hold to account and is, by the way,
Speaker 1: not wholly bought in by our democratic system, also with
Speaker 1: a profit motive. Okay, so you put those three things together,
Speaker 1: and oh lo and behold, you have the problems that
Speaker 1: befall all American institutions. Let's go and put this next
Speaker 1: one up here on a screen. In one California town,
Speaker 1: Flock misread license plates in seventy one percent of the
Speaker 1: alerts that it sent to police. Summer of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: a police called a man to discuss a persistent problem
Speaker 1: with his license plate. The city's AI powered license plate reader,
Speaker 1: made up by Flock, had repeatedly misread the plate six times.
Speaker 1: They had sent alerts to the Roseville Police Department, identifying
Speaker 1: the vehicle as stolen or used in a felony crime.
Speaker 1: Police could see that the flock software kept confusing nine
Speaker 1: four an eight. The car owner said he would take
Speaker 1: off his license plate cover, and soon after it happened again.
Speaker 1: So this guy is getting harassed by the police because
Speaker 1: the AI license plate reader is not you know, is
Speaker 1: not reading his plate correctly. Now again, if you're going
Speaker 1: to pay this company all this money, you're going to
Speaker 1: mount all these cameras in public and make it so
Speaker 1: that we're basically eroding all public privacy, you would at
Speaker 1: the very least say could it work? And yet in
Speaker 1: this case it's not working. Oh. Second one is that
Speaker 1: we also know about institutional misuse and abuse. This also
Speaker 1: happened many times with the NSA with their warrant list
Speaker 1: spuying program. Let's put this one up here on the screen.
Speaker 1: How raw rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into
Speaker 1: a tool for stalking. So, for example, they interview a
Speaker 1: woman Marcy Bakley. She couldn't understand how her ex boyfriend
Speaker 1: always seemed to know where she was when she went
Speaker 1: to buy groceries. He would text her about it. Sometimes
Speaker 1: within minutes, despite he was working fifteen miles from her
Speaker 1: home as police chief in a small town in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: One day in twenty twenty four, when he incorrectly suspected
Speaker 1: that she'd gone to see a man against his witches,
Speaker 1: he messaged her, I didn't think he would slip up.
Speaker 1: She began to feel like she was constantly being watched.
Speaker 1: She installed cameras around her home and on her patio
Speaker 1: to see if he was stalking her. She bought hidden
Speaker 1: camera detective a detector. Three times, in desperation, she drove
Speaker 1: her car to a mechanic shop. Then one day she
Speaker 1: pressed him for answers, and he said he was using
Speaker 1: his flock access as a police officer quote like thousands
Speaker 1: of other law enforcement agencies, his police cars can his
Speaker 1: police force can follow cars spotted by flocks sprawling network
Speaker 1: of AI roadside cameras which record passing license plate into
Speaker 1: a mappable database that officers can then search while investigating
Speaker 1: a crime. However, they then note that it's obviously rife
Speaker 1: and abuse. Now, to be clear, he was arrested on
Speaker 1: charges of stocking harassment and license plate misreader abuse, but
Speaker 1: as you can see very clearly is that there are
Speaker 1: no actual checks within the system from stopping these small
Speaker 1: town sheriffs or any of these other places with very
Speaker 1: little accountability to be able to use it for whatever
Speaker 1: ends that they want. And I'm not, you know, against
Speaker 1: the police or any of that, but I do think
Speaker 1: it's very very clear that if we're going to have
Speaker 1: a system like this and then spread it very oddly
Speaker 1: with no real like federal government oversight, keep it to
Speaker 1: you know, contracts with localities and with states, that is
Speaker 1: clearly to the advantage of flock the flock the company,
Speaker 1: which is way less accountable, as I said, to some
Speaker 1: nationally organized system with at the very least you could
Speaker 1: have some ability to have democratic checks on this ability.
Speaker 1: And it also just gets to the point of these
Speaker 1: cameras went up. We have no say about it at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're all out there here, Okay, they're here. Better deal
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: And think about how terrifying this was for this woman.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, he had looked up her tags and
Speaker 2: those of her teenage daughter more than six hundred times.
Speaker 2: More than six hundred times. By the way, you can
Speaker 2: go to have I been flocked, and they do a
Speaker 2: search that aggregates police search logs to see if your
Speaker 2: license plate has been searched. So at least that public
Speaker 2: tool is available to you. And I think it's no
Speaker 2: accident that the CEO of Flock finds this sort of
Speaker 2: you know, open access in for me to be such
Speaker 2: a threat to their business model, because you do start
Speaker 2: to see the public. The more they become aware of this,
Speaker 2: the more horrified they are by it, and the more
Speaker 2: sort of organic push back there is to it. But
Speaker 2: lest you think that this was a one off case
Speaker 2: with this, you know one bad apple who was using
Speaker 2: the technology, misusing the technology to stalk his ex and
Speaker 2: her teenage daughter. Authorities have charged your accused at least
Speaker 2: fifty law enforcement officers of using this for unauthorized purposes.
Speaker 2: You had one dude who was tracking an X to
Speaker 2: see if she was going to an abortion clinic. You
Speaker 2: had all kinds of stalking to see if they were
Speaker 2: with a new man, or stalking the new man to
Speaker 2: see what he was up to. Threats, abuse, horrifying, horrifying
Speaker 2: stuff that is going on with this, And to your point,
Speaker 2: there's really no laws around it, and you think the
Speaker 2: police departments are going to just on their own make
Speaker 2: sure that there's you know, limited use of this technology. No,
Speaker 2: they want a free hand to be able to do
Speaker 2: whatever they want with it, so that they can deploy
Speaker 2: it in the ways that they, you know, think are
Speaker 2: going to be useful and easy for them. It really
Speaker 2: is sort of like crack cocaine to these police departments,
Speaker 2: because even that one in California where they found the
Speaker 2: license plates were being misread seventy one percent of the time.
Speaker 2: You might look at that and go, this seems like
Speaker 2: it might be more trouble than it's worth. Maybe they'll
Speaker 2: just get rid of it. They're not getting rid of
Speaker 2: it because in the certain cases they find it useful.
Speaker 2: And so once this technology becomes embedded, even when it
Speaker 2: performs extremely poorly, even when it causes all sorts of
Speaker 2: civil rights violations and privacy violations, it is very difficult
Speaker 2: to dislodge because the police departments like it, They enjoy it,
Speaker 2: and just one other piece here in terms of you know,
Speaker 2: all right, so what's the big deal if they misidentify
Speaker 2: the license plate? Who really, you know, who really cares? Okay,
Speaker 2: it's kind of awkward for the police departments, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's misuse an expenditure of resources that they wouldn't need.
Speaker 2: Put D four up on the screen. Just think about
Speaker 2: what this would look like for you, you and your family.
Speaker 2: So this is a guy who test drives vehicles, like
Speaker 2: that's his job. He like test drives vehicles and then
Speaker 2: he writes up reviews of them for this website called
Speaker 2: The Drive. Well, because of a sort of technical glitch
Speaker 2: and error in the way that they were tracking these
Speaker 2: test drive vehicles, the vehicle that he was test driving,
Speaker 2: this very expensive one, was flagged as having been stolen.
Speaker 2: So police in this town tracked him and his family
Speaker 2: for days. They had all this video recording of him,
Speaker 2: you know, going about his life, going to the grocery store,
Speaker 2: et cetera. He and his wife pull into a Kohle's
Speaker 2: parking lot. Multiple police vehicles like race up, surround them,
Speaker 2: pin them in. He's freaking out, like what is going
Speaker 2: on here, and you know, responds in a way that
Speaker 2: sort of de escalates the situation. Fortunately, these cops listened
Speaker 2: to him and believed what he had to say. One
Speaker 2: of them, luckily, was actually familiar with the drive and
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, this is legit. Because you can imagine
Speaker 2: this sounds like bullshit, Like no, no, I just test
Speaker 2: drive these cars for a living, these expensive cars for
Speaker 2: a living. You could see how that would sound like bullshit.
Speaker 2: And they told him, Hey, you're lucky that this happened here,
Speaker 2: because if it happened in the city, they would come
Speaker 2: at you guns drawn. Like that's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: This is complete insanity. And to the point about the
Speaker 2: you know, the rising political consciousness and why some of
Speaker 2: this just information being accessible to the public is creating
Speaker 2: a real problem for them. You can see some response
Speaker 2: on both the right and the left as politicians try
Speaker 2: to position themselves as caring about these issues in local communities.
Speaker 2: Byron Donald's down in Florida, we can put D five up.
Speaker 1: On the screen.
Speaker 2: He's sounding the alarm about flock surveillance cameras. He's saying
Speaker 2: that they're impinging on constitutional rights. He's calling for a
Speaker 2: full pause. And I took note of this. Francesca, hang,
Speaker 2: how I think you know we talked earlier about the
Speaker 2: whole canceled Thanksgiving situation.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to say about that.
Speaker 2: In terms of why she's leading in the Democratic primary
Speaker 2: and certainly has a shot in the general election, is
Speaker 2: because of the range of issues that she has really
Speaker 2: chosen to focus on, among them data centers, and she
Speaker 2: gives a mention to flot cameras in this new ad
Speaker 2: that she just put out.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 4: I'm here at the failed fox Con manufacturing site. This
Speaker 4: is now a Microsoft AI data center plan. Just like
Speaker 4: in twenty eighteen with fox Con, Republicans will sell out
Speaker 4: our communities again.
Speaker 2: I think we can say this is we can say
Speaker 2: this is the eighth wonder of the world.
Speaker 4: Flock cameras, poison groundwater and eye source that don't create
Speaker 4: future good jobs, two billion dollars in tax breaks that
Speaker 4: you and I will be paying for. I'm the only
Speaker 4: candidate in this race to call for a moratorium on
Speaker 4: the construction of new AI data centers. We can't afford
Speaker 4: to be fox conned again. The people deserve a same.
Speaker 2: So there you see the mention of flot cameras being
Speaker 2: pulled into this broader issue said around, you know, pushing
Speaker 2: back on data centers, tapping into the whole Fox counn
Speaker 2: situation in Wisconsin as well. But I took note of
Speaker 2: she was the first Democratic candidate that I'd seen put
Speaker 2: this in you know, any of the ads, and so
Speaker 2: you ask yourself, why has she quickly skyrocketed to the
Speaker 2: top of the Democratic primary leader board and you know
Speaker 2: is basically FATA company that she's going to be the
Speaker 2: Democratic nominee against some very prominent establishment back candidates that
Speaker 2: she was up against. And I think it's because she
Speaker 2: really has had her finger on the pulse of some
Speaker 2: of these bubbling issues that are really also cross ideological right.
Speaker 1: And that's that's why we show the Byron Donalds thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, very likely to be the next governor of Florida.
Speaker 1: He is saying that you need a full pause. We've
Speaker 1: had a number actually of GOP representatives very recently who
Speaker 1: have been talking about flock. I mean, it's very obvious
Speaker 1: because at the high level, like I said, there's no
Speaker 1: federal regulation on AI license plate readers. It's all state
Speaker 1: and local. The company is getting fantastically rich. These have
Speaker 1: come across the entire name. You can just go to
Speaker 1: deflock and actually look at the map of where they
Speaker 1: all are. Very likely it's already in your community, or
Speaker 1: you drive one at least unwittingly. You have at a
Speaker 1: minimum in the last few months, and you have no
Speaker 1: say in this whole Like have I had been flocked.
Speaker 1: That's only because a foia information that you're able to see.
Speaker 1: But there's no actual regulatory body on whether this is
Speaker 1: okay that we're outsourcing all this info completely to a
Speaker 1: private company which is now saying that if you track
Speaker 1: where they are that you're somehow a terrorist. So I
Speaker 1: think that the political dynamics around this are very important.
Speaker 1: Anybody should be deeply concerned about this ability of a
Speaker 1: private company to just come in partner with the localities
Speaker 1: of which there's very little insight, regulation or even knowledge
Speaker 1: of the community itself. They come up everywhere and then
Speaker 1: you know, the justification is is that it's vital in
Speaker 1: helping solve crime, and I think that's probably true, But
Speaker 1: there's also a significant downside we're seeing already with the abuse,
Speaker 1: with the mystery. There needs to be the ability for
Speaker 1: the public to have some sort of say to keep
Speaker 1: things actually accountable, and it's become I mean, I've seen
Speaker 1: this spread like wildfire in terms of people who are
Speaker 1: upset about this, you know, general feeling not just with
Speaker 1: data centers, but with the cameras of being mass surveiled
Speaker 1: all the time. Imagine COVID if this type of technology
Speaker 1: had been as widespread at that time, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you got a ticket, you left your house during lockdown
Speaker 1: like that. It's so so easy. I mean to think
Speaker 1: about what you know, the state of California would have
Speaker 1: done in the middle of a lockdown if they had
Speaker 1: this type of technology, and how they easily could have
Speaker 1: made it and integrated it into their enforcement regime. If
Speaker 1: you're worried about immigration, yeah, well, oh you're an activist
Speaker 1: and you happen to be in the area. Here you go,
Speaker 1: here's a ticket. You know, beds are coming to your door,
Speaker 1: And frankly, I think that's already happening. I was just
Speaker 1: reading a Wall Street Journal piece passive this morning. But
Speaker 1: this is what enables it. This is the reason, and
Speaker 1: this is exactly why I think most people at the
Speaker 1: very lea should demand a hell of a lot more
Speaker 1: regulation and safeguard as opposed to just allowing private company
Speaker 1: states and locality just put these things up wherever we live,
Speaker 1: basically with no real notice, I think, to all of us.
Speaker 2: And so, yeah, well, and Sager, you're making an important
Speaker 2: point here, which is, well, it may help solve certain
Speaker 2: types of crimes. It's also opening up an entirely new
Speaker 2: vector of potential criminality, as you can see with all
Speaker 2: of this stalking and harassment that is going on here.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean in kind of a similar way
Speaker 2: with the immigration crackdown, where on the one hand you
Speaker 2: could say, oh, this is law and order. On the
Speaker 2: other hand, you saw all the chaos that created and
Speaker 2: all the criminal behavior from the ICE agents in the
Speaker 2: street which just went completely unpunished. You can see a
Speaker 2: similar nexus here where, yes, on the one hand, it
Speaker 2: may make it easier to track some of the bad guys,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, it enables a whole other series
Speaker 2: of bad guys to do things that are really horrifying
Speaker 2: and terrifying and infringe on our liberties. There's always a
Speaker 2: balance in a society between you know, this sort of
Speaker 2: like authoritarianism, but you know, maybe the crime get solved
Speaker 2: versus people having some liberty that has to be struck.
Speaker 2: And I think most Americans are saying this goes way
Speaker 2: too far in the direction of just a complete, a
Speaker 2: total surveillance state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's it comes down to enforcement, you know,
Speaker 1: it comes down to and you you could to it
Speaker 1: in multiple different directions. If you are in Seattle, people
Speaker 1: are literally smoking crack on the bus. But if you speed,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get a ticket. That's insane. That is a
Speaker 1: complete insane. Now let me do the other way. So
Speaker 1: I just talked about the lowest common denominor named lowest
Speaker 1: common denominator of society, a literal crackhead or a fence
Speaker 1: and all head. Well, let's switch it. If you are
Speaker 1: one of these people who Trump just pardoned for a
Speaker 1: multi billion dollars ponzi scheme, right, and you get out
Speaker 1: of prison, But I run a red light and I
Speaker 1: get twenty five dollars ticket. That's bullshit too. So that's
Speaker 1: what it comes back. There's no consistent enforcement. It comes
Speaker 1: down to run of the middle. Actual everyday citizen is
Speaker 1: dually screwed, and there's this type of system. We have
Speaker 1: a lot of compassion. You know, you got a federal
Speaker 1: government on the side of the ultra rich. But if
Speaker 1: you're just a normal everyday guy and you're just you know,
Speaker 1: you're not a fentanyl addict, you're not an ultra rich billionaire.
Speaker 1: You're the person actually who's has the most consistent law
Speaker 1: enforcement directed at you. And I think that's what is
Speaker 1: wrong with our country. So anyway, some free from free
Speaker 1: law and order discourse there for some of the candidates
Speaker 1: that are out there. All right, let's get to Japan.
Speaker 1: Joining us now is Daniel Besner. He is the author
Speaker 1: of the Imperious Realism substack, the author of Imperious Realism,
Speaker 1: the book which we could show all of you, and
Speaker 1: the host of the American Prestige podcast. That's a record
Speaker 1: intro here for guests. But again someone have corresponded with
Speaker 1: a few times and who really caught my interest with
Speaker 1: some of his writing and some of his analysis. So
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us, Dan, we appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me. Really happy to
Speaker 5: be here.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so, you've been really lasered in on this theory
Speaker 1: of imperious realism which you've developed. Kind of the fallout
Speaker 1: of post Cold War liberalism and the rise of a
Speaker 1: new multi polar world one of the things topics that
Speaker 1: we cover pretty extensively here on our show. Just to
Speaker 1: link it to today's news, let's put this one up
Speaker 1: here for example, on the screen about Iran is said
Speaker 1: to get some Chinese shoulder launched missile systems in weeks
Speaker 1: made me think of some of your analysis. This is
Speaker 1: exactly the same type of tactics the United States undertook
Speaker 1: during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. But you know,
Speaker 1: Joe or generally, maybe give the audience an idea of
Speaker 1: your framework here around imperious realism, what it means for
Speaker 1: the United States and then the future of the world,
Speaker 1: and connected here to the Iran situation.
Speaker 5: Absolutely so. I think there's something interesting happening in how
Speaker 5: Americans understand their role in the world and what I
Speaker 5: would term the American Empire, which is this notion that
Speaker 5: there's really no changing it, that there's really no way
Speaker 5: to transform the American Empire, to transform geopolitics. And I
Speaker 5: think this is a transformation from how Americans understood their
Speaker 5: world role as recently as the nineteen nineties, when someone
Speaker 5: like madel and Olivery could say on the Today Show
Speaker 5: that the United States sees further than other countries, which
Speaker 5: gives us license to act in the world. I think
Speaker 5: the failures of the global War on Terror and also
Speaker 5: the end of what I would call mass politics, the
Speaker 5: inability of people to actually affect foreign policy and economic policy,
Speaker 5: and a number of other issue areas has engendered this
Speaker 5: cynicism about American power, but this idea that we must
Speaker 5: nevertheless act in the world, but then we feel guilty
Speaker 5: about it and don't think that anything could really change.
Speaker 5: So the way that I think about imperialist realism is
Speaker 5: that it's easier to imagine the end of the world
Speaker 5: than it is to imagine the end of the American empire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean fascinating kind of to put in that perspective,
Speaker 1: but just break it down more towards the path towards
Speaker 1: multipolarity and how it fits within that framework.
Speaker 5: Sure, so I think this is why it actually matters,
Speaker 5: because I think that the world is becoming a more
Speaker 5: multi polar world. The United States was uniquely powerful both
Speaker 5: after World War Two, were controlled something like half of
Speaker 5: the world's manufacturing base, had an atomic monopoly, that is,
Speaker 5: a monopoly of atomic weapons, really had the world's only
Speaker 5: real air force, and the more we learn about the
Speaker 5: Soviet Union, particularly in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, the
Speaker 5: more we learned that it was actually incredibly weak, much
Speaker 5: weaker than Americans could have really known at the time.
Speaker 5: And then, of course, after the end of the Cold War,
Speaker 5: the United States was the last remaining superpower. It was
Speaker 5: really the global hedgemon. This was the so called unipolar moment,
Speaker 5: which Charles Crowdhammer term that Charles Crowdhammer basically identified. But
Speaker 5: I think that two things have happened in the last
Speaker 5: twenty five years when the United States squandered its global power.
Speaker 5: You see with the global War terror and just failure
Speaker 5: after failure there, whether you're looking at Iraq, Libya, or Afghanistan,
Speaker 5: just total disintegration of American farm policy there. And then
Speaker 5: you also have the recession, which I think has really
Speaker 5: damaged the United States's global position. And so you have
Speaker 5: those two things coupled with the quote unquote rise of China,
Speaker 5: but really the re emergence of China as a major
Speaker 5: global power, which it was for most of human history,
Speaker 5: and also the re emergence of Russia as a global power.
Speaker 5: So you have this new multipolar world. And just to
Speaker 5: wrap up here, why this is important is that this
Speaker 5: is precisely the moment where we need to imagine alternatives
Speaker 5: to American global empire, because this alternative is going to happen.
Speaker 5: The question is not a matter of if, but when,
Speaker 5: And the real issue for us in this country is
Speaker 5: how we manage this transition to multipolarity. Is it going
Speaker 5: to be violent or is it going to be not violent?
Speaker 2: Danielle talk a little bit about the shift away from
Speaker 2: even rhetorical support for the quote unquote liberal international order.
Speaker 2: So for my entire life, you know, all of our
Speaker 2: wars and interventions have been framed in these liberal international values.
Speaker 2: We all know the ways that the American Empire has
Speaker 2: fallen short of that rhetoric, but the rhetoric was deployed,
Speaker 2: We're going to bring freedom to the Iraqis et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And now between the genocide and Gaza, and
Speaker 2: you know, the attacks on Iran and the enabling of
Speaker 2: any number of continued Israeli war crimes, there's really not
Speaker 2: even a sort of gesture towards that liberal internationalism. You
Speaker 2: could see it also with just kidnapping Maduro and saying
Speaker 2: we're going to take Venezuela. There's no wrapping it in oh,
Speaker 2: human rights, and he was a bad guy. It's all
Speaker 2: just like, no, we want their stuff and we're going
Speaker 2: to take it, and we're going to be overt about it.
Speaker 2: You write that this is effectively a sign of the times,
Speaker 2: and that We're moving into an era where no longer
Speaker 2: will there be this sort of overarching ideological frameworks that
Speaker 2: are used to justify actions in the world. So talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about what that shift, how that shift
Speaker 2: is occurring, and.
Speaker 5: What it means absolutely, and it's a really important question.
Speaker 5: So it's perhaps the easiest way to see this is
Speaker 5: to compare something like the George W. Bush administration's national
Speaker 5: security strategy with national security strategies. And this where I
Speaker 5: think it's interesting from not only the Trump administration but
Speaker 5: the Biden administration. When you look back on the War
Speaker 5: on Terror George W. Bush national security strategies, you see
Speaker 5: consistent references to democracy promotion, to democracy promotion being the
Speaker 5: key to American security, and this, you know, I'm an
Speaker 5: elder millennial, This really defined American foreign policy in the
Speaker 5: two thousands and really even into the twenty tens. Obama
Speaker 5: himself also talks about things like democracy and humanity and
Speaker 5: humane war and bringing effectively liberalism to the international space.
Speaker 5: But I think that this is, as you said, Crystal,
Speaker 5: this is just impossible to believe after the global war
Speaker 5: and terror and what you see, and this is really interesting,
Speaker 5: this transition to begin not even really in the first
Speaker 5: Trump administration, but more so in the Biden administration. So
Speaker 5: if you remember, Biden came into office framing international politics
Speaker 5: as a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. But when you
Speaker 5: actually look at how policymakers and the Biden administration talked,
Speaker 5: for example, about the Ukraine War and Russia's invasion of
Speaker 5: u and why the United States should, for examples, and
Speaker 5: weapons to Ukraine, they almost never talked about democracy or
Speaker 5: protecting Ukrainian democracy. They talked totally in the language of interests.
Speaker 5: Lincoln says, like, the United States needs to do this,
Speaker 5: otherwise there'll be another power and that will be bad
Speaker 5: for American interests. They never talk about democracy. And obviously
Speaker 5: this is tripled down with the second Trump administration, who
Speaker 5: never even pretends to have this sort of global human
Speaker 5: rights vision. And what I think is really interesting here
Speaker 5: is that this is something that you don't only see
Speaker 5: in the United States. You also see it in China,
Speaker 5: and you also see it in Russia. When you look
Speaker 5: at the national security strategies of China and Russia, there's
Speaker 5: almost no discussion of ideology. For example, the Chinese national
Speaker 5: security strategy, you'd think they'd mentioned communism or socialism. They
Speaker 5: mentioned it like something thirteen times, and they mentioned security
Speaker 5: hundreds and hundreds of times, and in the Russian national
Speaker 5: security strategy they barely mention ideology. So what you see here,
Speaker 5: I think, and then we could talk more about this.
Speaker 5: This is the consequence of what happens when all major
Speaker 5: nations on Earth, basically every nation except in North Korea,
Speaker 5: has embraced a capitalist form of organizing the industrialist and
Speaker 5: industrial and post industrial economies. There's nothing really ideological to
Speaker 5: fight over any longer. No one's promoting a fascist way
Speaker 5: to organize an economy. No one's even promoting a communist
Speaker 5: way to organize an economy. We're all different forms of capitalism.
Speaker 5: So where Francis Fukuyama said that the end of history
Speaker 5: would mean the triumph of liberalism, what we see is
Speaker 5: that the end of history, which is to say the
Speaker 5: spread of capitalism, actually just means means that liberalism itself
Speaker 5: is withering away. And I think this explains a lot
Speaker 5: about international politics and also domestic politics.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you said which is important
Speaker 1: there is, you know, the World War two, at the
Speaker 1: most reductive level could be understood as a battle between
Speaker 1: authoritarianism and fascist organization alongside democracy or the people's way
Speaker 1: to One way is literal Bolshevism, other is democracy. A
Speaker 1: lot more complicated than that, but that's an easy way
Speaker 1: to understand it. However, you know, the Chinese are just
Speaker 1: better capitalists than we are at a certain point. Russia
Speaker 1: itself is like state sponsored capitalism. We're not fighting about that.
Speaker 1: We're fighting in the language of interest. But as I
Speaker 1: understand it, I actually think that maybe makes the world
Speaker 1: more dangerous, because if we're all just scrambling for interest
Speaker 1: and not even having ideological underpinning, it seems to make
Speaker 1: conflict more likely. I'm curious for your reaction.
Speaker 5: It could go either way, because when you look at
Speaker 5: what the United States thought about the Soviet Union, particularly
Speaker 5: in the nineteen fifties, effectively until the Cuban Missile Crisis,
Speaker 5: American policy makers viewed the Soviet Union as totally illegitimate
Speaker 5: because it was so ideologically different. They thought that you
Speaker 5: couldn't actually make deals. Now, why is foreign policy makers
Speaker 5: in a world organized around interests might actually find it
Speaker 5: easier to reach deals because there are just these quote
Speaker 5: unquote objectives. Now, nothing's objective, but you know what I'm
Speaker 5: saying here, there are these spaces where you could agree.
Speaker 5: You could agree to work together about climate change, you
Speaker 5: could agree to work together about global inequality. The problem
Speaker 5: is that American foreign policy is still ideological in the
Speaker 5: sense of not liberal based. But Americans still believe they
Speaker 5: need to dominate the world. The Americans still believe many
Speaker 5: Americans at least still believe that there's no genuine alternative
Speaker 5: to American empire. So an American foreign policy elite that
Speaker 5: embraces a form of imperialist realism, even as they know
Speaker 5: the United States is not going to make the world
Speaker 5: a better place, actually makes international politics more dangerous because
Speaker 5: then maybe you're not going to leave East Asia, maybe
Speaker 5: you genuinely believe that you have to stay in East
Speaker 5: Asia for American security. And even someone who's genuinely good
Speaker 5: on some of these things, like John Mersheimer, he argues
Speaker 5: that the United States needs to maintain its forward position
Speaker 5: in East Asia basically now until the end of time.
Speaker 5: So I think it's those types of ideas that the
Speaker 5: United States needs to maintain a global primacy now and
Speaker 5: forever that could actually make the world more dangerous. Soccer,
Speaker 5: like you're claiming but doesn't have to be that way,
Speaker 5: but it currently is now interesting.
Speaker 2: Dan, how does AI development fit into your analysis? You've
Speaker 2: got Elon Musk in a Reason interviews saying, not only
Speaker 2: is everyone going to have universal high income, but money
Speaker 2: is not going to be a thing. You've had books
Speaker 2: written from the left about, you know, fully automated luxury
Speaker 2: communism that could potentially be enabled by AI. You have
Speaker 2: all of these technolog arcs who are basically talking about
Speaker 2: how we need to rip up the current social contract
Speaker 2: and do something completely different. I mean, doesn't that potentially
Speaker 2: augur for a new ideological valance and you know, new
Speaker 2: systems that break significantly from the capitalist order that we
Speaker 2: have now that could come into could come into play
Speaker 2: over the next decade or so.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I think it's really important. And I think to
Speaker 5: my mind, and I think I'm perhaps a little unique
Speaker 5: on the left where I situate myself on this. I
Speaker 5: think the major problem with AI is that it's going
Speaker 5: to exist in under capitalism because to some degree you
Speaker 5: could view it as achieving Marxist fantasy where you no
Speaker 5: longer have to engage in the types of BS jobs
Speaker 5: that someone like David Graeber wrote about that it would
Speaker 5: actually free you to rear cattle in the morning and
Speaker 5: criticize in the afternoon and drink beer in the evenings.
Speaker 5: But in actually existing capitalism, all it's going to do
Speaker 5: is basically destroy labor. And I view AI primarily as
Speaker 5: related to the falling rate of profit, which is this
Speaker 5: idea put forward by Marx and other economists, not just Marxists,
Speaker 5: which is that over time profits become more difficult to
Speaker 5: basically squeeze out of a capitalist order. I mean, the
Speaker 5: way that I talk about it to my students is
Speaker 5: if you build Saint Louis in the nineteenth century, you're
Speaker 5: going to make a lot of money. But now in
Speaker 5: the twenty first century you have to basically manipulate financial
Speaker 5: derivatives in order to achieve a stable level of growth.
Speaker 5: So I think that the capitalist class, whether consciously unconsciously,
Speaker 5: is trying to de industrialize the white collar and professional
Speaker 5: managerial class. So that's what I think artificial intelligence primarily
Speaker 5: it's economic incentive is. And when it comes to international politics,
Speaker 5: I think the major issue that we could face is
Speaker 5: something that we saw in Iran, which is AI doing
Speaker 5: target selection based on houtmoded data and you get the
Speaker 5: it seems to be, you get the destruction of you know,
Speaker 5: children's schools, and there's also potential for AI arms races
Speaker 5: and things along those lines. But I think the technology
Speaker 5: is a bit too immature to see where that will go.
Speaker 5: But like atomic weaponry, you would ideally have some form
Speaker 5: of international regulation of it. But again in this interest
Speaker 5: based world where the United States thinks it has to
Speaker 5: be primed now and forever, it's unlikely you're going to
Speaker 5: get that.
Speaker 1: So just going forward, like what exactly? So we're gonna
Speaker 1: have a new world order? Obviously that loaded term, but
Speaker 1: it's actually literally quite coming. So what's that?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: What are our different options here? You just said there's
Speaker 1: one East Asia. I agree with me. I'm or Shira.
Speaker 1: For the record, we could debate that a little bit later.
Speaker 1: That's one option is kind of retrenchment, focusing on core objectives.
Speaker 1: The other is the Iran option is you break the
Speaker 1: back of the empire on a stupid foreign conflict, which
Speaker 1: is completely meaningless. If you were to look at history,
Speaker 1: that's usually how an empire dies. I guess another option
Speaker 1: is that we end up potentially fighting home. You know,
Speaker 1: the mythical Taiwan conflict. Where can we end up?
Speaker 5: What do you think I mean, I think the choices
Speaker 5: between restraining and reduction of American presence abroad or fighting wars.
Speaker 5: I think this is put it in starkest terms. Either
Speaker 5: the United States is going to reduce its global footprint.
Speaker 5: It's you know, at this point seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: or so military basis, it's going to accept that it's
Speaker 5: no longer the power it was in nineteen forty five
Speaker 5: or eighty nine or ninety one, and it is going
Speaker 5: to come home, which I actually think is a much
Speaker 5: deeper health strand in American politics. And actually the period
Speaker 5: since World War Two is quite unique going.
Speaker 1: Back to I totally agree. Yeah, that's how it I
Speaker 1: go to a normal outcome for the majority of history precisely.
Speaker 5: And you look at George Washington's farewell address, which was
Speaker 5: actually a letter. Fun fact, he warns against not participating
Speaker 5: in foreign entanglements in Europe. But you know, people have
Speaker 5: talked about this South Rouayre. This isn't to deny that
Speaker 5: the United States has always been an empire westward expansion.
Speaker 5: Native tribes are understood as foreign nations literally, which is
Speaker 5: why Neil Gorsich is ironically good on native relations, but
Speaker 5: I think that we're entering a moment where we really
Speaker 5: need to rethink global power, and if we don't accept
Speaker 5: novel realities, I think we're going to get violent. Let's
Speaker 5: just link this to Iran, because I think it's difficult
Speaker 5: to know right now, but I think we might look
Speaker 5: back on the Iran conflict as auguring a revolution in
Speaker 5: military affairs of the type that we haven't really seen
Speaker 5: since the invention of the rifle in the middle of
Speaker 5: the nineteenth century and then later the machine gun. Because
Speaker 5: before the rifle and the machine gun, you had basically
Speaker 5: Napoleonic battles. Armies would face and they'd go at each other.
Speaker 5: Robert E. Lee discovered that that wasn't how it worked
Speaker 5: during the Civil War, and then all the European leaders
Speaker 5: discovered that wasn't how it worked in World War One
Speaker 5: because the machine guns could just mow you down. I
Speaker 5: think that the biggest thing happening in military affairs right
Speaker 5: now is the effects of jeron warfare. The way that
Speaker 5: I put it, Think about what if one day the
Speaker 5: United States puts in an aircraft carrier in the South
Speaker 5: China Sea, and China sends literally one million drones at
Speaker 5: that airraft carrier. This is the transformation in warfare that
Speaker 5: is also, as we've already seen, going to force a
Speaker 5: wise American foreign policy elite. Not sure we have the
Speaker 5: wise blob, but imagine that we did to actually rethink
Speaker 5: basing bait. These are structures, literal American bases. A lot
Speaker 5: of these were bases that were taken over from the
Speaker 5: British Empire during World War Two. They are artifacts of
Speaker 5: a different age of warfare and the age of drone warfare.
Speaker 5: Literally send a million drones to the Middle Eastern bases.
Speaker 5: But it doesn't seem like the foreign policy establishment is
Speaker 5: rethinking those fundamental premises. And again this is imperialist realism.
Speaker 5: This notion that you really can't think on alternative world,
Speaker 5: which is the type of thing that could lead to violence.
Speaker 1: Well fascinating, Dan, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Thank you guys.
Speaker 1: Are you're welcome. Everybody go buy the book, listen to
Speaker 1: the pods, subscribe to the substack, any other things I
Speaker 1: need to promote.
Speaker 5: No, I mean, really, the only path forward is to
Speaker 5: subscribe to the podcast and the subset. That is the
Speaker 5: first thing, and that's the only way for the world.
Speaker 1: I hear that one. See you man, Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 1: Thanks Dan. All right, everybody, we're gonna kick the Japan
Speaker 1: segment to Thursday. We talked a little bit too much
Speaker 1: with Dan, but we will have of course, our lives,
Speaker 1: so you got a lot of content, so you shouldn't complain.
Speaker 1: There's a live stream today seven thirty pm Eastern Time
Speaker 1: with Crystal and Ryan. There's a Wednesday show, and then
Speaker 1: there's still be our normal programming on Thursday and Friday.
Speaker 1: Don't forget we got a free month trial going on.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and take advantage of breakingpoints dot com. So
Speaker 1: I guess Chrystal and Ryan will see you at seven
Speaker 1: thirty pm Eastern Time right here on the Breaking Points channel.