Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea.
Speaker 2: I was a CIA officer stationed around the world in
Speaker 2: high threat posts in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 1: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 1: and in war zones.
Speaker 3: We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.
Speaker 2: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories large and small.
Speaker 1: Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 2: This is mission implausible. Today's guest is Gabriel Gatehouse. Gabriel's
Speaker 2: an award winning journalist and broadcaster. He is the author
Speaker 2: of a book in the excellent BBC podcast Theories called
Speaker 2: The Coming Storm that looks at QAnon and the January
Speaker 2: sixth conspiracies, and the book subtitle is a Journey into
Speaker 2: the Heart of the Conspiracy Machine. Abral, My first question
Speaker 2: is can you tell us what the heart of that
Speaker 2: machine looks like? And is there any surgery that can
Speaker 2: save it.
Speaker 1: It's a very it's a strange and dark place jun
Speaker 1: the heart of that machine. In a way, I was
Speaker 1: slightly doubtful about the subtitle because the heart of the
Speaker 1: conspiracy machine makes it sound like a conspiracy basically that
Speaker 1: there's somebody there pulling the levers, creating these conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: to some dark and diabolical end. And in some cases
Speaker 1: that is true. But in many cases you're nodding. See
Speaker 1: you nodding away, Jerry. But in many cases these conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories are organic at least to begin with, and they
Speaker 1: grow out of the malaise of modern capitalism, the paranoid
Speaker 1: style in American politics, the great knack that you guys
Speaker 1: in America have for telling a story. You just you
Speaker 1: guys just love a story. And the weirder, even if
Speaker 1: it's especially if it's wrong, right, it's the weirder and
Speaker 1: more wonderful it is the more you like it. And
Speaker 1: that's why you gave the world Hollywood and all of
Speaker 1: this amazing stuff. But you're now being eaten up by
Speaker 1: our own infotainment industry. Yes, I'm sorry to be the
Speaker 1: bearer of bad news, so Gab, I have to admit
Speaker 1: I am a sucker for a British accent, in fact,
Speaker 1: so much so that I'm marrying one.
Speaker 3: Right, But is there something peculiar about the American brand
Speaker 3: or our version of conspiracies?
Speaker 1: Of course, it's not just an American thing, but so
Speaker 1: often you guys just do it better. It's interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I do think it has something to do with this
Speaker 1: kind of great tradition of storytelling. It's a wonderful place
Speaker 1: to work because even the kind of fully red pilled,
Speaker 1: completely objectively bonkers people are usually actually really nice if
Speaker 1: you come to them with a sort of open mind
Speaker 1: and say, look, I don't think you and I agree
Speaker 1: on a whole hell of a lot. I don't believe
Speaker 1: in most of the things that you believe in, but
Speaker 1: I am interested in why you believe them and what
Speaker 1: might lie behind it, and I have an open mind,
Speaker 1: So why don't you just talk to me? And people
Speaker 1: just mostly very generous with their time and their insights.
Speaker 1: We British were constantly judging who we might be talking
Speaker 1: to and what their views might be, or what social
Speaker 1: strata they might come from, and we're fine tuning out.
Speaker 1: America is not like that. They just go for it.
Speaker 1: I want to take a shot at the British though.
Speaker 1: It's please please do yes, it's a historical tradition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So we have got QAnon and all the
Speaker 3: craziness for this. And I looked into British conspiracy theories
Speaker 3: around this, and all I could come up was was
Speaker 3: the voting pencil conspiracy right that the pencil provided to
Speaker 3: you with the polling stations, that somehow m I five
Speaker 3: was like erasing it and putting it back. But we
Speaker 3: have bamboo fibers from China and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: I've never heard that conspiracy theory, so thank you for
Speaker 1: adding that one.
Speaker 2: Well, you guys did Brexit before we did the generous
Speaker 2: six stuff or whatever, So.
Speaker 1: We did Brexit. But Brexit. Brexit wasn't the conspiracy much
Speaker 1: as many of my liberal friends liked to think it was.
Speaker 1: A lot of people over here think that Brexit was
Speaker 1: created by the Russians as a sciop or something, which
Speaker 1: is of course palpable nonsense. We need to look at
Speaker 1: ourselves and the European Union and why it was that
Speaker 1: a majority of people decided they didn't like this institution
Speaker 1: that was giving them all this prosperity.
Speaker 2: But the way politics can be used as people could
Speaker 2: make simple, perhaps false or largely untrue statements or stories
Speaker 2: that people would follow and.
Speaker 1: Believe it's politics. Right. You create a narrative and you
Speaker 1: hope that your narrative is going to be stronger than
Speaker 1: the other guy's narrative, right, And unfortunately, a three word
Speaker 1: slogan like take back control is a stronger narrative than well,
Speaker 1: everything's kind of fine. Well it's not really fine, but
Speaker 1: really if we just don't really do anything, things might
Speaker 1: get better. So let's not just not do anything, right,
Speaker 1: that's just not a fair good narrative. You know, Trump
Speaker 1: has strong messaging, whatever you may think of him, he's
Speaker 1: got killer political instincts, and he's got a strong message
Speaker 1: defeat the deep state. You guys.
Speaker 3: Doing some research on you, I found one thing really
Speaker 3: compelling that you put across that the conventions of right
Speaker 3: and left are all fair.
Speaker 1: They should be thrown out the window.
Speaker 3: And it's really pro system and anti system. Those who
Speaker 3: want to throw the baby out, the baby and the
Speaker 3: bath water are out, and those that are looking to
Speaker 3: reform or at least push forward.
Speaker 1: With what we I think in a way, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say this began with the nineties, but I feel like
Speaker 1: the nineties in so many ways is the beginning of
Speaker 1: everything that we're at now. It was this kind of
Speaker 1: weird period of kind of geopolitical stasis, the end of history.
Speaker 1: You guys had successfully defeated the Soviet Union. Liberalism, yes,
Speaker 1: very good liberalism in all its forms had one right,
Speaker 1: economic liberalism. Globalization was in full swing. We don't need
Speaker 1: it anymore exactly. And you know, I as somebody who
Speaker 1: just graduated mid nineties with a degree in Russian, like
Speaker 1: nobody needed that anymore. But in another way, everything was
Speaker 1: just beginning right the Internet, that kind of the breakdown
Speaker 1: of the of consensus and the establishment fueled by tech.
Speaker 1: But the thing that Bill Clinton was so brilliant ad
Speaker 1: was he just occupied such a vast swathe of the
Speaker 1: center ground in politics that basically to oppose Clinton you
Speaker 1: had to be on the fringes right. You either had
Speaker 1: to be on the far right. You know, Newt Gingrich
Speaker 1: kind of throwing out conspiracy theories as it were, Vince
Speaker 1: Foster and this White House lawyer who'd committed suicide, and
Speaker 1: all these kind of tales were being spun around him
Speaker 1: about how really he was having an affair with Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton and she'd rolled him up at a carpet and
Speaker 1: left him at a safe house in Virginia and then
Speaker 1: dumped him in a park and blah blah blah. So
Speaker 1: that was coming from the right or on the left.
Speaker 1: You basically had to go further and further left to
Speaker 1: oppose Bill Clinton. So what that set up was this
Speaker 1: this political dynamic which is now coming back to bite us,
Speaker 1: which is not the war between right and left, which
Speaker 1: is the paradigm that you guys grew up in and
Speaker 1: grew up fighting and that I was born into. But
Speaker 1: it's the paradigm of the center versus the fringes. And
Speaker 1: I think what's happened in America and the polling bears
Speaker 1: this out. I remember there was one extraordinary bit of
Speaker 1: polling where they asked people about their views of the
Speaker 1: whole political and economic system in the United States. Did
Speaker 1: people a think it was doing just fine. Did they
Speaker 1: be think it was doing okay but maybe needed minor modifications.
Speaker 1: They added up to about thirty eight percent. Then there
Speaker 1: were the people who said, no, the system is really
Speaker 1: in deep trouble and it needs root and branch reform.
Speaker 1: Or the people who said it's so screwed we should
Speaker 1: burn it all down and start from the beginning. And
Speaker 1: that lot of people added up to about sixty percent.
Speaker 1: Right now, it's very clear who is the burn it
Speaker 1: all down candidate here? Right. So when I saw that
Speaker 1: little bit of polling buried right at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the pole, I was like, he's going to win. He's
Speaker 1: going to win again. And it's clear. And because the
Speaker 1: people who are now in power in your country are
Speaker 1: so certifiably bonkers. Often even though they quite often put
Speaker 1: their finger on the problems, they're very good at identifying
Speaker 1: real problems. It's just their solutions are totally batshit. But
Speaker 1: what's happened is that the Democrats and what used to
Speaker 1: be called establishment Republicans but are now outcasts, have become
Speaker 1: the party of people who are saying, la la la la,
Speaker 1: la la la, we're not listening. Everything's fine, just stop
Speaker 1: tinkering with the system and that's not working.
Speaker 2: Actually, let's dig in a little bit deeper to the
Speaker 2: nineties thing.
Speaker 1: There's an interesting can I just say something, Yes, So
Speaker 1: this whole Vince Foster, My sort of conceit in the
Speaker 1: coming storm was that I identified the death of Vince
Speaker 1: Foster is basically ground zero. That led to Qanoni of
Speaker 1: the Yeah exactly patients.
Speaker 2: What Hillary Clinton then called a vast right wing conspiracy.
Speaker 1: A vast right wing conspiracy, which was an idea that
Speaker 1: was fed to her by a political consultant named Chris Lahne,
Speaker 1: who we interviewed for the podcast. Very interesting guy. We
Speaker 1: then went off to work in Silicon Valley. But so
Speaker 1: the Monica Lewinsky connection is this that the woman who
Speaker 1: first clipped off the world to the whole Monica Lewinsky
Speaker 1: thing was Linda Tripp, who was also the last person
Speaker 1: to see Vince Foster alive. She was then a White
Speaker 1: House assistant, and she brought him his lunch. And in
Speaker 1: all the kind of hook plat around what had happened
Speaker 1: to Vince Foster, and there was a question of what
Speaker 1: had he eaten for his lunch, And in one account
Speaker 1: he'd eaten the hamburger with a side of Eminem's, and
Speaker 1: in another account there were no Eminems and it was
Speaker 1: a cheeseburger and he'd removed the onions. And this was
Speaker 1: like the kind of beginnings of the inconsistencies of the
Speaker 1: account of Vince Foster's death that people started to pull
Speaker 1: out and to poke at until it grew into this
Speaker 1: monstrous conspiracy theory about how he'd been murdered because he
Speaker 1: knew too much. Look, what happened in the nineties was
Speaker 1: that there were all these Batchett conspiracy theories, and there
Speaker 1: was also an actual conspiracy to create conspiracies called the
Speaker 1: Arkansas Project right, which was funded by a wealthy guy
Speaker 1: wealthy air called rich a Melonscape, and it was basically
Speaker 1: sending out people to dredge up the wildest stories from
Speaker 1: the swamps of Arkansas and put them into print, true
Speaker 1: or not, and then the White House obviously would rebut
Speaker 1: these things, and most of them were kind of wild,
Speaker 1: but some of them were obviously quite true. And the
Speaker 1: thing was that the not only the White Houses you expect,
Speaker 1: but the establishment media for want of a better word,
Speaker 1: in the nineties also treated the stories about Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: and his philandering and sometimes worse right. Because let's not
Speaker 1: forget that there were worse stories than Monica Lewinski, which
Speaker 1: whatever you say about that relationship was consensual, There were
Speaker 1: worse stories. There was Juernita Broadrick, who alleged that Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton had raped her violently in a hotel room in
Speaker 1: Arkansas in nineteen seventy eight, And the reason people found
Speaker 1: her account credible was because she never wanted to tell
Speaker 1: it and was forced under threat of perjury to tell
Speaker 1: it by the Star Inquiry and it then got completely
Speaker 1: buried because it didn't fit the narrative. I spoke to
Speaker 1: Juanita and she said Starr and his lawyers kept asking her,
Speaker 1: did anyone ever threaten you to keep quiet about this?
Speaker 1: And she was like no. And then she then they
Speaker 1: were like, did anyone ever offer you any inducements, any
Speaker 1: money or jobs or anything to keep quiet about this?
Speaker 1: She was like no, no one spoke to me about
Speaker 1: it at all, and so then they were like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we can't do obstructural justice, so let's just forget about it.
Speaker 1: The question of whether the president of the United States
Speaker 1: had violently raped a woman was secondary to the political considerations.
Speaker 1: And so my through line is that narrative about the
Speaker 1: Clinton's actually being people was pressed beneath the surface because
Speaker 1: some of the genuinely bad stuff that was credible and
Speaker 1: worthy of reporting on by serious journalists also wasn't touched
Speaker 1: because of all the batchit stuff right, and nobody wanted
Speaker 1: to be associated with that. As somebody put it at
Speaker 1: the time, that story was fruit from a poison tree.
Speaker 1: Nobody wanted to touch it. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: technology was developing. First it was to a radio, and
Speaker 1: then it was the email newsletter, and then it was
Speaker 1: the kind of full blown Internet and these stories started
Speaker 1: breathing like bacteria and petridition, growing and multiplying and mutating.
Speaker 1: Fast forward twenty years and you've got a White House
Speaker 1: reporter in twenty twenty asks President Trump. I think it's
Speaker 1: the first time that QAnon ever comes up at a
Speaker 1: White House briefing. It's a brilliant clip. If you could
Speaker 1: dig it out. It's amazing because you can see Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's political instincts kicking in. The reporter goes, mister President,
Speaker 1: this is this theory that you're secretly fighting a cabal
Speaker 1: of satanic pedophiles. Does that sound like something you might
Speaker 1: be involved in? And you can see Donald Trump's eyes
Speaker 1: getting to and he's thinking, is this what is this?
Speaker 4: It is this belief that you are secretly saving the
Speaker 4: world from this sitanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Does
Speaker 4: that sound like something you are behind?
Speaker 1: Well, I haven't, I haven't heard that. But is that
Speaker 1: supposed to be a.
Speaker 5: Bad thing or a good thing? I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: if I can help save the world from problems, I'm
Speaker 5: willing to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to put.
Speaker 5: Myself out there and we are actually we're saving the
Speaker 5: world from a radical left philosophy that will destroy this country.
Speaker 5: And when this country is gone, the rest of the
Speaker 5: world would follow.
Speaker 1: He doesn't really know what this conspiracy theory is at
Speaker 1: that time, I'm convinced, but he consentsed that it is
Speaker 1: useful to him and that he can use it. And
Speaker 1: there were people around him who knew that it was
Speaker 1: useful to him, and so they weaponized it. Let's pass
Speaker 1: for a second. We'll be right back.
Speaker 6: Another interesting thing that you bring up is from the nineties,
Speaker 6: is that in ninety seven a book came out, The
Speaker 6: Sovereign Individual and I guess it had an American investor
Speaker 6: in a British politician with an odd name, Reese.
Speaker 1: Maurice mog You say, he's got an odd name, but
Speaker 1: he's one of the most well known names in political
Speaker 1: circles here because Americans, and he's he is about Brexit.
Speaker 1: His son was, and yes so his son, that Jacob
Speaker 1: was one of the kind of pre eminent Brexit.
Speaker 3: But they outlined what we would today call the conspiracy
Speaker 3: theory in the center of gravity of that it's very
Speaker 3: applicable today. Right, it's all about tech bros. All the
Speaker 3: darks running the world who don't pay you know, basically
Speaker 3: describes Peter Teal and Elon Musk and their impact and
Speaker 3: their impact on how we think and how we nationality
Speaker 3: Texas government. I guess Peter teelhead it reprinted, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in twenty twenty. Well, it's one of his favorite books.
Speaker 1: So it's published in seven, nineteen ninety seven. It's called
Speaker 1: The Sovereign Individual, and the subtitle is something like Mastering
Speaker 1: the Transition to the Digital Age or something like that,
Speaker 1: and it is it's incredibly foresightful, prophetic even right. It
Speaker 1: predicts in nineteen ninety seven all sorts of things that
Speaker 1: have come down the tracks, AI, the gig economy, offshore taxing. Basically,
Speaker 1: they say, you know, the Internet basically had the click
Speaker 1: of a mouse button, you can move your money from
Speaker 1: one jurisdiction to the other. Cryptocurrencies they predict this is
Speaker 1: more than ten years before bitcoin. And they predict that
Speaker 1: all of this it's not a conspiracy theory, it's a
Speaker 1: sort of exercise in crystal ballgazing and political analysis. They
Speaker 1: predict that all of these technological factors will lead to
Speaker 1: the collapse of the nation state and the dollar will collapse,
Speaker 1: Crypto will replace it. States will lose their ability to
Speaker 1: basically carry out the basic functions of any government, which
Speaker 1: is collecting taxes and providing services, and in their stead
Speaker 1: will rise the sovereign individual, vastly wealthy and unimaginably powerful
Speaker 1: individuals whose power, in the words of the authors, will
Speaker 1: rival that of the Greek gods of Mount Olympus.
Speaker 2: Does it measure the w South African? Does it say
Speaker 2: anything about it?
Speaker 1: It does not mention that they will all be South Africa.
Speaker 1: So peed Teel was an investment who was I think
Speaker 1: the first outside investor in Facebook. He set up PayPal
Speaker 1: with Elon Musk at the end of the nineties, and
Speaker 1: he has been pretty on the money in certain big
Speaker 1: trends in tech. He's one of the most sort of
Speaker 1: powerful and influential investors in Silicon Valley. He also is
Speaker 1: of the right. He was editor of the I think
Speaker 1: it's called the Stanford Review when he was at Stanford,
Speaker 1: which was this kind of right wing student newspaper, and
Speaker 1: he has, with his money and power, pursued that interest
Speaker 1: deep into the kind of meme warriors of the far right.
Speaker 1: Around twenty sixteen, when he was one of the lone
Speaker 1: voices in Silicon Valley to come out and back Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and was really hanging out with these strange characters creatures
Speaker 1: of the Internet, bloggers with names like Mensius Moldbug, whose
Speaker 1: real name is Curtis Jarvin and who is very, very
Speaker 1: influential in Trump circles. He's the sort of the inter
Speaker 1: sellectual backbone, if you like, of trump Ism and Dvancism.
Speaker 1: He's dreampt up this idea of neo reactionary, this near
Speaker 1: reactionary movement where democracy in America is dead and what
Speaker 1: America needs is an American caesar to cross the Rubican
Speaker 1: with will to power and all this fuddy duddy nonsense
Speaker 1: about people having a say in things. Get rid of
Speaker 1: all of that and just dictatorship or as he likes
Speaker 1: to call it, monarchy. And it's hard not to read
Speaker 1: that book and look at what's going on now and
Speaker 1: not conclude that what Peter Teel and others like about
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is not so much that he's a disruptor
Speaker 1: in the terms of in parlance of Silicon Valley, but
Speaker 1: he's a racking ball, right. He's a bulldozer that you
Speaker 1: can drive through the whole establishment and accelerate your way
Speaker 1: into this bright or dark future of sovereign individuals where
Speaker 1: democracy is basically dead and power resides with these hugely
Speaker 1: wealthy tech barons.
Speaker 2: It's a view of the future where these very important, rich,
Speaker 2: often white people will take over. But there's also this
Speaker 2: view that the government just takes care of the weak people.
Speaker 2: We need to get rid of the weak people. We're
Speaker 2: going to We're eventually going to go to Mars anyway,
Speaker 2: So does it go further? What's your sense of where
Speaker 2: these people are going.
Speaker 1: There is a kind of wing of the MAGA movement
Speaker 1: that I think is led by people like Peter Teel
Speaker 1: Musk and jd Vance, who's one of their kind of creatures,
Speaker 1: David Sacks, and other South African who genuinely believe that
Speaker 1: the in the vision of the sovereign individual and that
Speaker 1: it's coming and they can accelerate its arrival. So for
Speaker 1: the podcast and for the book, I spend a bit
Speaker 1: of time with a bunch of tech guys in something
Speaker 1: called the network state movement. So they basically what they
Speaker 1: want to achieve is the kind of breakdown of the
Speaker 1: nation state and instead there'll be network states. A bit like,
Speaker 1: so you'd be able to choose your citizenship the same
Speaker 1: way as you choose a gym membership. You look at
Speaker 1: what they offer where they have their branches, and you go,
Speaker 1: this fits with my needs and values, and off you go.
Speaker 1: But they go a lot further than this. Where is
Speaker 1: the new frontier. There is no more frontier. There's no
Speaker 1: more virgin land on the American continent other than Greenland.
Speaker 1: Of course, cyberspace is a frontier that they can control,
Speaker 1: but also the cosmos is a frontier that they can
Speaker 1: go out to. And a lot of the thinking behind
Speaker 1: the sovereign individual comes out of a movement that I
Speaker 1: think is very very little known and only ever had
Speaker 1: a few hundred adherents. It's called the extrapy movement, the Extropians,
Speaker 1: and it was this sort of techno radical, techno optimist
Speaker 1: movement that flourished in California in the nineties.
Speaker 7: Extropians are people who want to push back limits of
Speaker 7: all kinds. One big one, of course, is human lifespan.
Speaker 7: We want to push back the limits to human life
Speaker 7: so we can live in definitely long which will mean
Speaker 7: removing getting rid of these human bodies and becoming posthuman
Speaker 7: as we call it.
Speaker 1: But they were talking about all this stuff, artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: virtual reality, augmented intelligence, augmenting human intelligence, merging humans with machines,
Speaker 1: cryonic preservation, and eventually conquering the cosmos. And I think
Speaker 1: when you speak to these people as I have done,
Speaker 1: and you hang out with them and you can get
Speaker 1: them to talk as they do when they're amongst themselves
Speaker 1: and not in a sort of combative interview situation, they
Speaker 1: will openly talk about how technology is going to lead
Speaker 1: in the next few years to a very they use
Speaker 1: the word Darwinistic moment, where basically the weak will be
Speaker 1: culled and pruned from the earth and the strong will
Speaker 1: inherit it. It's a very to me, a very dark
Speaker 1: and bleak vision of the future, but these guys freacking
Speaker 1: love it. Well.
Speaker 3: It's very South African, apart teid eugenics, Nazist sort of thing.
Speaker 1: My point about that is that it's actually quite a
Speaker 1: sort of quint essentially American vision, right, Yeah, yeah, eugenic
Speaker 1: star in the US. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you have also you have also interviewed or interacted
Speaker 3: with Jacob Chancey the Qmanan Sharman.
Speaker 1: I first met him in November twenty twenty two months
Speaker 1: before the storming of the Capitol. No one knew this guy.
Speaker 1: I was in Arizona. I was just after the election,
Speaker 1: and I was there to report for BBC Television on
Speaker 1: this kind of nascent movement called Stop the Steel and
Speaker 1: this conspiracy theory that there was a big conspiracy to
Speaker 1: steal election. And I'm Stanley at and I spot this
Speaker 1: guy and he's draped in furs, he's got horns on
Speaker 1: his head, and he's carrying a sign that says c S.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, I'm going to talk to that guy.
Speaker 1: He looks brilliant, and he's very friendly. He's a thoroughly
Speaker 1: nice guy. But the story he's got in his head
Speaker 1: is pretty bonkers, right. He believes that a cabal of
Speaker 1: satanic pedophiles, possibly led by Hillary Clinton, has captured the
Speaker 1: levers of power and are now running afraid of Don Trump,
Speaker 1: who threatens to expose them, and so they're stealing the election.
Speaker 1: It was like he'd eaten an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: for breakfast and was now gurgitating them in random order.
Speaker 1: So there was bits about JFK and tunnels under the desert,
Speaker 1: and just like a whole load of weird stuff. And
Speaker 1: I must emphasize this. He was an absolutely lovely guy.
Speaker 1: He was not aggressive or mean in any way. He
Speaker 1: was genuinely open with me and telling me all about
Speaker 1: his really weird ideas. And I thought about it, and
Speaker 1: I thought, this guy does look fantastic, But how irresponsible
Speaker 1: would it be for an establishment journalist working for a
Speaker 1: serious news organization to give airtime to this nonsense. I
Speaker 1: draw the line. I have my principles and I will
Speaker 1: stand on them. So I said, thank you, sir, and
Speaker 1: I did not film an interview with him, much to
Speaker 1: my absolute regret when two months later I was sitting
Speaker 1: in London and all the TV screens around the BBC
Speaker 1: headquarters were focused on one thing and one thing only,
Speaker 1: and it's the capital and the mob is storming it.
Speaker 1: And then we cut to the Senate Chamber and there
Speaker 1: he is the same guy with the horns and the furs,
Speaker 1: and my I remember my camera was there. He's like,
Speaker 1: that was that not the guy that you eat? Was that?
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, it's that that guy.
Speaker 1: Did we didn't? Did we are?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: We didn't. Ah fuck, there's nothing like the kind of
Speaker 1: the fomo of the foreign correspondent who's in the wrong
Speaker 1: place at the wrong time, or even worse, who was
Speaker 1: in the right at slightly the wrong time and made
Speaker 1: the wrong decision and now doesn't have the scope. But
Speaker 1: also I then realized, when I thought about it, that actually,
Speaker 1: perhaps my mistake was more than just the kind of
Speaker 1: one of missing the scoop. But I hadn't hadn't listened
Speaker 1: to this guy properly, I hadn't heard the story that
Speaker 1: he'd told me about the Cabbala Satanic pedophiles, and asked myself, now,
Speaker 1: why does that seem true to him, and why does
Speaker 1: it seem true to so many other people. We were
Speaker 1: talking about the horseshoe and how the left and right
Speaker 1: extremes had joined each other. A lot of what Jacob
Speaker 1: Chanceley was talking about was extremely from the left. He
Speaker 1: talks a lot about how the zero point one percent
Speaker 1: have sewn up all the resources under global capitalism, and
Speaker 1: they're throwing crumbs and making all us little people, just
Speaker 1: turning us into mindless consumers and all this kind of
Speaker 1: quite left wing stuff, as well as these kind of
Speaker 1: very right wing talking points about pedophiles and whatnot. But
Speaker 1: I think The kind of conclusion I came to about
Speaker 1: this particular conspiracy theory was that if you took it literally,
Speaker 1: which is that Hillary Clinton was leading a cabal of
Speaker 1: Satan worshiping pedophiles from the basement of a pizza restaurant
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC that didn't have a basement, then you're like,
Speaker 1: it's obviously nonsense. But if you took it as a
Speaker 1: sort of parable or a metaphor, and you heard that
Speaker 1: story and you understood it to mean that people felt
Speaker 1: that their democracy had been hijacked by more powerful people
Speaker 1: whom they hadn't voted for, that the people that they
Speaker 1: could vote for every four years or two years weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily the most powerful people. The more powerful people were
Speaker 1: people who were in the shadows, running big financial corporations
Speaker 1: or whatever, and they were taking decisions that weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: always to the benefit of the little people. Then you
Speaker 1: were thinking, Ah, okay, maybe they've got a point.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in just a moment.
Speaker 3: So Trump does talk a lot about how the world
Speaker 3: thinks we're fools and we're taking advantage of us and
Speaker 3: laughing at us.
Speaker 1: How does the world look at us? Though I think
Speaker 1: they are laughing at us.
Speaker 3: My British relatives think we're like knocking futs right now.
Speaker 1: I think maybe if we were laughing at you from
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen to twenty twenty, we're not
Speaker 1: laughing anymore. Shit's getting real now. And I honestly think
Speaker 1: the serious answer to this question is I think that
Speaker 1: most European countries and governments, whatever they may say in
Speaker 1: public about special relationships and strongest relationship ever between Britain
Speaker 1: and the United States, work with Trump and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: We know it's over. We know that the arrangement that
Speaker 1: lasted from nineteen forty five until twenty twenty five is
Speaker 1: it's done. It's cooked. You can't like all you had
Speaker 1: to do was watch that scene in the Oval Office
Speaker 1: with Zelenski being pummeled and stabbed in the back and
Speaker 1: in the front by the country that they thought it
Speaker 1: was its ally, and the complete unpredictability of the Trump
Speaker 1: administration and those around him, and whatever your emotional attachment
Speaker 1: to America, and I think there is a deep love
Speaker 1: for America, certainly in Britain and many other European countries,
Speaker 1: common sense says that you cannot rely on that as
Speaker 1: an ally, So you have to cut yourself loose. You've
Speaker 1: got to stand on your own two feet. Trump says,
Speaker 1: We've got to stand on our own two feet, and
Speaker 1: he's achieved that. We're going to do it, and I'm
Speaker 1: very sad about it. You guys have been not an
Speaker 1: unqualified force for good in the world over the past
Speaker 1: eighty years. You have been a force for good in
Speaker 1: the world. You've also been a force for a lot
Speaker 1: of funck wittery.
Speaker 2: We took from the British every many years.
Speaker 1: Of you really did, you really did? And I think
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here in Britain it feels like because we
Speaker 1: said goodbye to our empire with barely battered an eyelid,
Speaker 1: pretended had never happened, and we sailed straight into the
Speaker 1: Special Relationship, and it feels now is the end of
Speaker 1: the British Empire that we continued vicariously through you guys.
Speaker 1: When I began my journalistic career in the BBC's Russian Service,
Speaker 1: where we broadcast the truth or propaganda in Russian to
Speaker 1: the former Soviet Union, and I remember thinking at around
Speaker 1: the time of the Iraq invasion and the kind of
Speaker 1: the fuck up over the weapons of mass destruction that
Speaker 1: weren't there, and when it became clear that no one
Speaker 1: really cared about the weapons of mass destruction, they were
Speaker 1: just going to do it anyway. And I remember saying
Speaker 1: to a colleague back then I was a very green,
Speaker 1: genous I said, I think I think that the United
Speaker 1: States of America is going to become a rogue state
Speaker 1: in my lifetime. This was at the point where George
Speaker 1: Bush had coined the word rogue state and access of evil.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, I think these guys are going to
Speaker 1: join them, and guys you have, oh.
Speaker 2: How are we going to be ill? Go to a
Speaker 2: software question. No, I think it's true, and I'm sad
Speaker 2: about it too.
Speaker 3: I have to say, yeah, no, we've were not wearing
Speaker 3: the white hand anymore. And with our fuck widdery or
Speaker 3: whatever you call it, at least we tried to be
Speaker 3: a force for good, even if we've got it long
Speaker 3: as awful as Iraq was, and it spent I spent
Speaker 3: like years of my life there like trying to make
Speaker 3: it right. But it was like, at least if you
Speaker 3: listen to the neo Kansas will bring democracy to Iraq,
Speaker 3: We'll remake the Middle East. It was silly and foolish,
Speaker 3: and god it had nothing to do with WMD.
Speaker 1: They at least had the at least had the pretense
Speaker 1: of some kind of arc of history bending towards justice
Speaker 1: the best for them.
Speaker 3: But there is one thing I really wanted to ask you.
Speaker 3: I fod it fierce that you were talking with a
Speaker 3: professor of folklore and he had some AI tool or
Speaker 3: a machine that could extrude folkal or conspiracy, genuine conspiracies
Speaker 3: from conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: By the sense was he wasn't able to do it right.
Speaker 1: First of all, this guy had the most fantastic name
Speaker 1: for somebody who's trying to untangle the tangled threat. His
Speaker 1: name was Tim Tanglini. So he and his students had
Speaker 1: built this bit of software really that you tried to
Speaker 1: use machine learning and AI that he claimed could tell
Speaker 1: a real conspiracy from a conspiracy theory. And so he
Speaker 1: trained his machine on two events. One was Pizzagate, which
Speaker 1: was based in the Washington, DC pizza parlor, out of
Speaker 1: whose basement the pedophile cabal was running the world. And
Speaker 1: the other one was something called Bridgegate, which was a
Speaker 1: very boring and complicated story about Governor Christie of New Jersey,
Speaker 1: whose people decided to create a massive traffic jam in
Speaker 1: order to get back at some political rival, but blamed
Speaker 1: it on something else. But it was an actual conspiracy
Speaker 1: to create a traffic jam. And you know, in a way,
Speaker 1: this is common sense. You don't really need AI for this.
Speaker 1: But Tim Danglin, he basically said that if you take Pizzagate,
Speaker 1: and you take one element out of Pizzagate, which is
Speaker 1: that emails between John Podesta and his staff talking about
Speaker 1: pizza were in fact code for child sex abuse, if
Speaker 1: you took that away, the whole story made no sense
Speaker 1: at all, Like the whole thing collapsed like a house
Speaker 1: of cards. Whereas with Bridgegate, like you could take away
Speaker 1: one element that like one source or element of it,
Speaker 1: and but the rest of the evidence would still be
Speaker 1: so overwhelming that the story was very hard to knock
Speaker 1: down because it was very robust. And that was the
Speaker 1: basis for his program. The reason I'd call him up
Speaker 1: was because I felt myself beginning to think like a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist. I was putting post it notes up on
Speaker 1: my wall, little bits of string look exactly, and so
Speaker 1: I called up Tin Dangelini and I said, can you
Speaker 1: please pull me out of my rabbit hole? And so
Speaker 1: he said, okay, fine, just lay it all out for me,
Speaker 1: and I'll stick it through my machine and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you whether it's a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory. And
Speaker 1: he put it all through his machine and it went right,
Speaker 1: it's a conspiracy. So I was like, oh, fuck, now
Speaker 1: I've got to go deeper. And so I started digging deeper.
Speaker 1: And I did feel for a while like I was
Speaker 1: turning into a conspiracy theorist. This is what the Trumpies
Speaker 1: call this, not QAnon, but bluing on right, And what
Speaker 1: are the conspiracy theories that blew and on? People believe
Speaker 1: in that Donald Trump was a Russian agent, for example,
Speaker 1: that there's a p tape, compromant Steele doc and all
Speaker 1: of that kind of stuff. So I was worried that
Speaker 1: I was becoming blue and on. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, was there a conspiracy in the nineties
Speaker 1: to start seeding conspiracy theories about the Clintons with the
Speaker 1: aim that eventually, twenty five years later, it would lead
Speaker 1: to the storing of the Capitol and the downfall of
Speaker 1: the nation state and the collapse of the dollar. And
Speaker 1: the rise of crypto and the sovereign individuals. Of course
Speaker 1: not that's just.
Speaker 2: Like butsense Gabriel. This goes back to your beginning where
Speaker 2: you say a lot of them are organic, right, But
Speaker 2: what happens is like if you go on q andon. Right,
Speaker 2: So there's you talk about in your series, Ron Watkins
Speaker 2: and the Philippines and q and Arizona and these things,
Speaker 2: and it looks like it comes together organically. But then
Speaker 2: there's a non organic piece where people like Jason Sullivan
Speaker 2: and other people see that it's a conspiracy theory then
Speaker 2: weaponize it through software to promote it on Twitter and
Speaker 2: other social media campaigns to help a political campaign. So
Speaker 2: there's a there's an organic piece that eventually has grabbed
Speaker 2: by others.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, and I think it's I think it's great,
Speaker 1: yeah and used, and I think anything that's definitely what happened.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned those names Jason Sullivan and people who
Speaker 1: worked on the campaign and very knowingly and wittingly thought
Speaker 1: this possibly likely organically created conspiracy called QAnon could be
Speaker 1: useful to us, so let's just use it. This is politics.
Speaker 1: But I think the same the same thing holds true
Speaker 1: for the whole kind of Russia meddling thing. I know,
Speaker 1: both here in Britain over Brexit and in America over
Speaker 1: Trump's first election, there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are holding on very tightly by their fingertips to the
Speaker 1: idea that it was really all the Russians and everything
Speaker 1: was fine in the Land of Milk and honey, that
Speaker 1: is the United States of America until the Russians started
Speaker 1: coming in with their nonsense. Now, I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in Russia with Russians, and there are some
Speaker 1: very clever people there. They're not that clever. And what
Speaker 1: happened in twenty sixteen was, yes, the Russians had the
Speaker 1: troll farm, and yes they were weaponizing divisions in American
Speaker 1: society and doing it quite effectively. But those divisions were there,
Speaker 1: and they were organic, and they were real divisions. They
Speaker 1: weren't they hadn't been plucked out of thin air by
Speaker 1: the Kremlin. And my strong feeling is to keep HARKing
Speaker 1: back to the Russians is it means you don't look
Speaker 1: in the mirror and you don't go, why the fuck
Speaker 1: have we ended up in this place? You could just
Speaker 1: go us the Russians that did it. But one's responsibility
Speaker 1: is to look at yourself and your society in the
Speaker 1: mirror and try and figure out where you've gone so wrong,
Speaker 1: not to point the finger at somebody else. Fair enough,
Speaker 1: So what are you doing now to stay saying? Are
Speaker 1: you detoxing from?
Speaker 2: Again?
Speaker 1: I get there to say anything. John knows what I'm
Speaker 1: doing the new podcast series. And I absolutely wanted to
Speaker 1: do what you suggest, Jerry, which is I wanted to
Speaker 1: have no more to do with any conspiracy theories or
Speaker 1: anything to do with any of that madness. And then
Speaker 1: I came across this crazy story about football and the
Speaker 1: CIA in the nineteen seventies, and I got wind of change.
Speaker 1: It's like wind of change but soccer. So I'm doing that.
Speaker 1: I'm also and now you can see how badly I'm
Speaker 1: failing at getting away from conspiracy theories, super interested in UFOs.
Speaker 1: But this administration, for all its failings, does at least
Speaker 1: seem to have a sort of crazy drive towards radical transparency.
Speaker 1: They're just like declassifying everything. I don't know how you
Speaker 1: guys feel about that, but they're declassifying and amid all
Speaker 1: the kind of JFK files and RFK files and MLK files.
Speaker 1: They're also apparently drive to declassify the UFO files. But
Speaker 1: it turns out that UFOs are real. There are there
Speaker 1: are Yeah, not everything is explicable. There are things that
Speaker 1: fly that are unidentified, otherwise known as unidentified flying objects.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it does turn out apparently that you, guys
Speaker 1: and the Pentagon various other agencies have been taking this
Speaker 1: ship seriously for quite a long time, while pretending that
Speaker 1: you weren't taking it seriously.
Speaker 2: What's Unfortunately, we keep having these conversations at the end,
Speaker 2: like Jerry and I are beaten down where we go
Speaker 2: and where's the optimism?
Speaker 1: Here? The optimism? I have something for you because everyone
Speaker 1: keeps asking me, Everyone keeps asking me this, and so
Speaker 1: I've come up with something. It's a little tenuous, but
Speaker 1: here it is. Bear with me. So I believe that
Speaker 1: we are experiencing the beginning of a period of epochal change,
Speaker 1: the likes of which we haven't seen for about five
Speaker 1: hundred years since the printing press, the Reformation, the Enlightenment,
Speaker 1: all that stuff once in a half a millennium epochal shift.
Speaker 1: And we are naturally feeling very nervous about the crumbling
Speaker 1: stablishment and institutions and all the certainties that we've taken
Speaker 1: for granted just crumbling all around us. So what I
Speaker 1: do in these moments of existential dread is I think
Speaker 1: myself into the mind of a fifteenth century German peasant
Speaker 1: who is tied to the land and sees the printing
Speaker 1: press coming out and Martin Luther nailing his things to
Speaker 1: the door jam, and he's wringing his hands over the
Speaker 1: death of the feudal order, and he's like, how is
Speaker 1: the world going to function once we're no longer tied
Speaker 1: to the land and the monasteries don't provide for all
Speaker 1: of our arms, and what healthcare remains if you can
Speaker 1: figure out the four humors and all of that, And
Speaker 1: he's going, oh, whoa, no, please can it just all
Speaker 1: please just go back to how it was. But then
Speaker 1: they have a lot of wars and lots of people
Speaker 1: die and lots of witches get burnt, but they get
Speaker 1: the enlightenment and democracy and science and they go to space.
Speaker 1: So I just think we're at the beginning of a
Speaker 1: very turbulent but also very interesting period that may, if
Speaker 1: we don't all kill each other, may lead to some
Speaker 1: unexpected and amazing developments. Will my children when they're my
Speaker 1: age still be living under the same system of parliamentary
Speaker 1: democracy that I grew up under? Or will their children? Probably?
Speaker 1: Not right, I just think nothing lasts forever. Is it
Speaker 1: going to be bad? Probably? Is it also maybe going
Speaker 1: to be better in some unforseeable, unfathomable way that I
Speaker 1: can't even imagine. Probably?
Speaker 2: All right, we'll take that, Dury and I are all
Speaker 2: that's just really great for us.
Speaker 1: So here, this is where you need to join the
Speaker 1: Extropians Scottsdale, Arizona and have yourself chronically frozen so that
Speaker 1: you can then be reawakened in the future Utopila and
Speaker 1: the space aliens if you're out there, like, we need
Speaker 1: some help right here's hoping? Okay, but this was really fun.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it a lot. What could be better than
Speaker 1: talking to two old spooks.
Speaker 4: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam David's, Jerry O'Shea, John Cipher,
Speaker 4: and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 1: The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 4: Mission Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable
Speaker 4: Pictures for iHeart Podcasts.