WW3 Debate: “We’re On the Brink of Global Collapse” - #1144

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They've been normalizing political violence in the United States. They've led to the rise of leaders in the United States that find the use of political violence increasingly normal. That's how we got to the Iran War. That, a lot of the specifics that we see Chris around the world. I think it's very important to understand that there is a hub. The United States is the most important, the most powerful country on the planet. What happens internally in the United States can have ripple effects around the world, and so I think it's really important to not just talk about all the other issues, but to see the United States is at the center of many, maybe not all, but many of those issues. What's happening internally in the United States, this is increasingly becoming a house divided. What do you think? I think the United States right now is the greatest threat to global peace because for the past 30 years, Paxiamericana has been dominant, and now with the rise of other powers, the United States refuses to seed its global hegemony, and this is why we're seeing conflicts around the world, specifically in the Middle East. I don't see a global conflict coming. Many regional conflicts are coming because the global system is restructuring itself. There is not really a global system at this point as there was during the European imperial age or during the period of the World War II quote. So rather than looking at a confrontation like nuclear war between the United States and Russia, we're looking at various smaller elements. Sometimes the United States is involved, but as to the international conflict, I lived through the 1970s. It was intense in the United States, but it was intense over a very small war. So the idea that there's a global system at this point, it's emerging, but because it's not emerged yet, many of the wars are going to be regional. Right, so you still see, is it right in thinking that Ukraine, Iran, whatever happens, Taiwan, China, that these things are separate conflicts rather than part of a single global conflict? Well, I think that we made the three of us disagree about whether or not there will be a World War III, a true unified global war. I just want to point out that right now we're experiencing multiple regional conflicts. They are linked in some ways, but together they are wrecking the global economy. They're planning a major effect on the global economy of what's happening in Russia, what the Russia Ukraine war, what's happening in the Iran conflict. And if we had a conflict with Taiwan and China on top of that, even if those remain three separate arenas, Chris, we might be heading to something far worse than in 1930s depression. So for the world, so this would have blowback effects on Africa, even though they wouldn't even be involved. So we can usefully talk about whether we should expect a true World War III scenario, but we are already seeing global consequences in ways we haven't seen since World War II. We did not see these global consequences in the Vietnam War, for example. We did not see these global consequences with the two, what we called forever wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. We're seeing them now, and that, even if it doesn't become army on army, Chinese army on America, that kind of force on force, this is already amazingly consequential for our lives. I think what's really important to appreciate is that, yes, these conflicts are regional, but there's a power orchestrating these conflicts and that is the United States. So it is the United States that unilaterally, without any reason, desire to attack Iran, which start the war in the Middle East, which is right now threatening to destroy the global economy. The war in Ukraine can also be blamed on United States because at the onset of the war in 2022 Putin and the Danesky would have come to an agreement, but Boris Johnson flew into Kiev and convinced Zelensky to fight this war. Right now in Southeast Asia, the United States is withdrawing, but we're seeing Japan being remilitarized, and we can imagine that Japan is being supported by the United States. In fact, if you look at the National Defense Strategy, which was published by the Pentagon earlier this year, it calls for the United States withdrawing from the global stage and creating balance of power in each different region, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. So you can make the argument that the United States is intent on maintaining its global hygienomy, but it recognizes that it doesn't have the military power, the political will, to control the entire world as it did in Pakistan-Marcana. So it is basically offloading its responsibilities to its regional allies. NATO in Europe is real in the GCC in the Middle East and Japan in Southeast Asia. See, I agree with about 70% of what he's saying. I believe, well, I think you're really on it, and I think that the parts I really agree with are that American decisions have been at the taproot of both of these wars, the war with Russia and Ukraine, and the Iran War that we're experiencing right now. Where I may disagree is, I think that there very much a function of decisions and decision-makers that have been evolving, given our internal divisions in our country. I think that we shouldn't look at this as simply a product of a global cycle of empires. I think we need to see that for the last 10 years, we have seen in 10 years, not just two years, an incredible rise of political violence in the United States. That is being driven, Chris, by major social changes inside of the United States, the shift from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy for the first time in our 250-year history, the shift of massive wealth to the top 1% over the last several decades. These are having amazing consequences inside of our government. It's producing a set of priorities and leaders, which are very different. We are now seeing leaders that find political violence normal. This is what you see with President Trump, both in his first term and now increasingly in his second term, and also some by Democratic leaders. You're also seeing, because of these internal problems, Chris, I think not sufficient attention to the consequences of these global decisions. I don't believe that we have, over the last 10 years, devoted the amount of attention to the consequences of issues with Russia and Ukraine, issues with Iran. I think that, and I think that because I've advised every White House from 2001 to 2024, I know something about this degree of attention, and I am overall observing not no attention. I think that's not quite right, and I don't mean that they're truly trivial, but nonetheless, the idea that we would continue to support NATO expansion and make a Ukraine a much, much stronger country, even after Putin takes Crimea in 2014 without serious attention to the consequences. I think there's too much we need to see as we're becoming internally absorbed. We have less cognitive space for the thing that I often do, strategy in the rest of the world, and that lack of cognitive space has not just been a function of one president. I think it's been a function of multiple presidents, and I think that's really what, maybe it's not a disagreement, it's what I would say, maybe an extension, or I would add to what you're saying. I guess people keep debating whether America is losing its grip as a world superpower. 20 years from now, do you think America is relatively stronger or weaker than it is now? I would say it's not losing it, it's wanting to lose it. The past 80 years was not been a happy time for the United States. For the United States, the fundamental principle is commanded to see from a long time. Keeping the way from the Atlantic ports was essential in this. This draw drew us into creating NATO, creating a economic system based on Bretton Woods and all these other things that patrimine this printer on the American economy. And recently we had to bail out the Japanese in a way. So what I see the United States is doing, okay? And these things are not gracefully done ever. It's pulling back from its vulnerability to the world, not engaged. Now the world is not seeing it that way because various things happened, okay? One, the Cold War ended in Ukraine. The Russian army could not take Ukraine after five years. This is not a military threat. So now the Cold War is obsolete and the idea of that, so the American re-desire and was predictable was a disengaged to the extent possible. But what the United Americans are doing is not increasing their power around the world. It's trying to remove its vulnerability from the world. And the world feels betrayed. So the United States is no longer doing it. No longer wants a role it had for the past eight years. But if we look out 20 years, Chris, and you asked the question, well right now we're 26% of the world's GDP, China's 17% of the world's GDP. So we still are number one, at least in terms of the numbers. But if we look out 20 years, China has a tremendous advantage going forward, but it's not just the slope of the curve. A big thing is happening, Chris. And it's been happening for the last 20 years, which is we are losing the next industrial advance, the next economic revolution, and we're losing it to China. And we're not even noticing it very much, Chris. So in June of 2025, well, we were bombing Fordeaux. I spent two weeks in China touring China's advanced industries. This was in Beijing, and this was in Wuhan. This was in Hangzhou. This was in San Chen. Most people go to China. First of all, they stopped going after COVID, and most people who went tend to go to Beijing and Shanghai. I want to see the actual advance industries on the shop for my point to you. China is in a terrifically difficult position economically. Well, let me just explain. You can challenge it, George, but let me explain what I mean. But I saw on that two week trip, I thought I was going to go and look at sort of Alibaba, see how they were a little bit ahead of different. I came away with a completely different impression. It was most important, I was in China in 1979, so it's some experience here. What I saw was not just uplifting of individual companies, Chris, uplifting whole cities, Wuhan, whole cities. So not just the advanced sector, the health care sector, the construction sector. When you look at what's happening in the cities, we're getting 10% of the idea of what's happening inside of China in the New York Times and in the media. February, I want to organize a trip to go back to China, Chris. If you want to come, I think you'd find this really interesting because it's what's. Well, I was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, I went to the University of Pittsburgh in the Rust Belt. If you go from Chicago to say Pittsburgh, that's about. And down to St. Louis, it's about 50 million people give or take. Well, that's about the half-moon crescent from Wuhan to Sen Chen, not identical, but pretty close, as you know, that area is a huge country. It's a huge country, but that crescent we're talking about. But China has done, and literally in about 10 or 12 years, it has some roots in the '90s, they have uplifted that entire 50 million people, Chris. They integrate. Why are they ahead? They're not just building companies. Their universities are tightly producing the BAs, the MAs, the PhDs. Why can't we produce more patriot missiles right now? Why can't we just have an operation warp speed? We don't have the workers to do that because we're not integrating the advanced workforce with the advanced, with also advanced healthcare. And by the way, advanced drivers license. China's cities is not China. The rural areas of China are profoundly important. It is the second largest economy in the world. In terms of for capital income, it's 71st. The fundamental problem that China has is it cannot consume the products it produces. Right now, just a few weeks ago, announced a plan to make more demands possible in the rural regions, which are very different from the coastal regions. So, when we look at China, we look at a country that has an economy too much, too large for it to consume. It is dependent on exports, with the United States being the largest importer of Chinese goods. So, we take a look at China and you take a look at how the summits are evolving and what's happening there. We see very, I see a very different China from you. I see the cities in marvelous shape, the coastal areas and South China. But that's not the majority of China. The Chinese still have the rural area where Mao Zedong went to raise the rebel Barbie on the long march and bought it back and that's what it did. Now, when you look at it from the kind of point of view at a global basis, it is the second largest economy. When you look at its ability to sustain itself, it heavily depends on exports. Now, what are the things that can consume what it produces? It can't. Possibly, it has tremendous capabilities but its per capita income is very low. So, you see a situation emerging as emerged several times before, particularly with the United States. The United States was a China of the 19th century. That is to say, first, the Civil War took place after that industrial rising that heavily dependent on exports to Europe. So, when you take a look at the relationship between the economic issues and the political issues and so on and so forth, the nature of the United States is to simultaneously have deep divisions and be able somehow to manage it, okay? So, when I look at these events and I live through the 70s, this bloating of various factions, if you were not anti-war and went into university, you did not come out of that university frequently. So, I'm not so impressed by the tensions within the United States. I don't know the period where they were there. We survived the Civil War, which was really a big discussion, okay? So, I see the United States as constantly, dynamically evolving through tension. So, if I was to categorize at least what I'm hearing so far from your side, China, very impressive, not just the upper trend, but the integration, this almost systemic blending of education in with industry, et cetera, et cetera. Beyond what we're doing. Yes. And internal strife inside of America, that's worrying, this could cause fracture and fascia from your side, China, well, it's got some problems. Look at the rural area of this, yes, you've got great development inside of the cities, but those are pockets that are relatively localized, that makes it less and also you've got this high export dependency because you can't consume what it is that you produce and America's been through shit before, it can probably put up with it. Most of all, China is vulnerable because it depends on these exports. Some of the other economies, folder, where they can buy it, or there's a political shift, the Chinese get into trouble because they must have access to the global market the same way the United States had to in the early part of the century. So when we look at all these things, okay, we say, okay, China has evolved dramatically. It has not solved this fundamental problem, which historically was there. The difference between the coastal regions of South China and the interior, this is what led to the revolution on the Mao Chitong and he didn't solve that problem. Jan, give me your perspective. We've seen two relatively diametrically opposed insights here. Yeah, so I am completely surprised by this, but unfortunately, and my wife's going to get very angry at me for this, but I'm another grave of George on this issue. So let me explain my reasoning. So George mentions the vulnerability of their own empire and that's the US dollar as a global risk of currency. The American people do not want this system because essentially the world can become a parasite on America, right? So if America has a global risk of currency, then America's capital markets are completely free and open and liberal. You cannot control capital flows in this cost-true-minus problem. For example, wealth inequality and financialization, the hauling out on the American manufacturing sector. That's one issue. Another issue is America needs to guarantee global peace and security. So that's why its army is spread throughout the world. That's why it's Pentagon budget is a $20 a year. So the United States assumes a lot of costs. And who benefits from this arrangement? Well, two forces. Wall Street, because of the financialization. But also the Chinese Communist Party. Because as George points out, China is an export dependent economy. In fact, you can make the argument that what China is doing is free riding on the American system, right? Because when Chinese ships export their goods to Europe, to the Middle East, to the United States, it's been protected by the US Navy. Not just Chinese Navy, the US Navy. China doesn't even have a blue water navy. It's the Americans that protect the seas. And when Chinese do exchanges, when they trade, it's for the US dollar. So the China is going to be dependent on Pax America. And so the idea that as Pax America is falling, China will rise, makes no sense. And I mean, the reality is, as George points out, China lacks domestic consumption power. It's people do not spend any money. Because it's people do not have any money. All the rich people are going where? Tonight's States. That's probably the one. But it's a huge problem that we haven't discussed, which is the demographic issue where China's aging rapidly. Because of the one child policy, China has no workforce. That's why China is spending everything on robotics and on semiconductors and on AI. Because China doesn't have the product of force it needs to carry it through the past 20, for the next 20, 40 years because of the aging crisis. So China's in a world of trouble. But where I disagree with-- Is it in a bigger world of trouble than America? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because regardless of how you feel about the United States right now, the United States is a self-sufficient resource rich economy with a very vibrant and energetic young population. China has the opposite problem, which is that it is extremely export-oriented. It's a very poor country, very limited resources. It's very dependent on global supply chains. And what's bringing down right now are global supply chains. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You train regularly, you eat reasonably well, you feel fine, but you're just kind of going off vibes. Most people have absolutely no idea what's going on inside their body. And that is why I partnered with Function. Function gives you access to more than 160 advanced lab tests, spanning hormones, heart health, kidney function, and even detects early signals linked to more than 50 types of cancer. To put that in perspective, your typical annual physical might test 20 markers. Function runs over 160. It's huge. Best of all, you test twice a year and everything lives inside of a simple dashboard. So you track trends over time, make sure you're moving in the right direction. And this level of testing would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it is $365 per year, just $1 a day to actually know what's happening inside of your body. And right now, we can get $25 offering it down to $340. Get the exact same blood panels that I use and save $25 by going to the link in the description below, or heading to functionhealth.com/modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modern wisdom. So let me just respond in this way. I had exactly their image 10 years ago. Exactly their image. So I first went to China in 1979, then I didn't go back until 2012. 10 trips from 2012 to 2015. Then I went back in 2025. And to even as late as 2015, I had exactly their image. Here's what happened in this trip. And this is what really are the core things that I'm seeing. Number one, the Alibaba BYD Xiaomi. I didn't just go and look at the shop floors. I met with their executives. They showed me their growth plans. It's not just that they have been spurting up since COVID. So all this building massively development since COVID. It's that since 2017, essentially the Trump tariffs that were first put on China in 2017 by President Trump. There's been a dramatic emphasis to disengage the development of the next generation of industries from America. So you can't buy the cutting edge BYD vehicles here in the United States. You can't buy the next level Tesla's of Xiaomi here in the United States. And they're not trying to sell them here. Also, the whole issue with Walmart and so forth. That's the last generation of what's occurred. They showed me their growth models. They are still export-oriented, but they're not export-oriented to Europe. And they're not export-oriented to the United States. Although they take a little crumbs on the edges, it is built around Asia. They're really counting on our in Asia. Now, true, in the short term here, there's some problems with the Iran War and, of course, Asia. So we talked about that with the actual top VPs, the exact, the top executives, and they explained to me that the bottom line is the more the United States gets sucked into a quagmire with Iran, yes, they will run into some short-term problems, but just like COVID, when they came out of those problems or the supply chain problem in COVID, they jettisoned ahead, they thought they were likely going to get ahead. And if you look at the numbers of what the BYD production has been this year, in 2026, what the numbers of Xiaomi has been, the numbers at least we can see, they're not as good as they were hoping, but they're about at the same level as the last year. So China's not. The Chinese growth rate is down to a little over 4%. It was the 5% and as great as 15% growth rate. And I'm saying this is the wrong measure. This would be like measuring America's growth rate without noticing electrification in the 1880s, which starts in this really small way. America has been great because since 1880, we have led every technological revolution since 1880. The AI revolution that we're right going through right now, we hope we're going to come out ahead, the stock market's certainly betting on that. I'm telling you, what I saw in China, it's not just about DeepSeek and Aoi Baba, they're building the core infrastructure to be able to beat us. And I mean, let me ask you this question. So right now, Japan is re-mytherizing rapidly, and it's building on lines with India, the Philippines, and Australia, the Quad, right? It seems to me, in the long term, the intention is embargo China to cut off supply chains. With India coming into it, Indonesia coming into it, and so on and so forth. So from Japan all the way to India, there is at sea a blockade. That's right. So what is China's response to this possible embargo? So as I look out here, first of all, if you're quite right, that there's a military possible consequence here, I think President Xi's question to Trump was exactly the right question, which was, are you President Trump going to fight here if there's a conflict between China and Taiwan? And President Trump said he wouldn't answer that question, because if you, yes, you have the Quad moving forward, but if you take out the United States from that equation, as I think we are heading in that direction, then this is just a very different competition between the Quad and China. They might fight, they might decide to fight just the Quad and China. But and both will go down some, but this is not a sure winner for the Quad over China. So I think this is be a very different, and notice this is not China provoking the war. That's right. This is outsiders attacking China. And what is, what did what happened with Mao? This was a gigantic revolution inside of China to foreign conquest. So this is not, talking about unifying China, if I could. The Taiwan situation has profoundly changed. Inside of Taiwan, the population is divided almost down the middle, with the KMT, the Kwame Tung, which is in favor of reuniting with China in some sort of way. That's about half the population. The other half the population is very much opposed to it. From the Chinese point of view, Taiwan was a very great danger because between Japan and the Philippines, Taiwan was a blocking force. The first island chain. Yeah, that's the first island chain. That they want Taiwan opened, okay? The United States does not have a fundamental interest on Taiwan. So the idea is we see that Xi is coming to the United States. And he has said this week, we're going to reach many great grievance in the United States. One of the forecasts I had was that this year China and the United States would come to a fundamental understanding with each other. Why? China must have that understanding. The United States is not a trivial partner, okay? It is the number one trading partner. And it is the only military threat to China. Therefore, accommodation is rational for China. And these talks have been taking place. So what I'm seeing in China is a tremendous amount of instability. in the political system, the economic system is moving ahead properly, but China has a fundamental problem because, as I said, it must have a decent relation with the United States. In the United States as said to it, we cannot be dependent on China for its imports. If it was also possible to load war with us, that happened to certainly Arab oil embargo, who were dependent on the Arabs, the Israelis were the war and they cut a bargain, but it was a disaster in 1970s. So if we are too dependent on the country with whom we have hostile relations, that's sustainable. So you're suggesting that the U.S. and China are going to become friends soon? Well, that's going to be a friend, that's going to be a little bit of lovers, they simply need each other. And here I agree. So my whole point was not that we must then have conflict with China. In fact, when I was in China, I was giving talks, arguing that given everything I just said, I think that China can rise peacefully with the United States. That's my big position. And it's because when I look out at the growth of power, what is power today? Power is modernization, technological development. We see that right now with what we're experiencing with Iran. We're not losing to Iran because of Iran's 4 percent. It's because of we're behind in understanding the second precision revolution. What's happening, Chris, is others are evolving. We're used to thinking we, the United States, are on the cutting edge of everything. And what we're learning is we're not on the cutting edge of everything. Now that doesn't mean we have to go to war against China. I was also impressed, President Xi basically asked Trump about the Thrucidides trap. Are we going to go to war? So I believe these are the right questions. I don't think we're heading to a war with China if we're smart because what we need to do is develop our industrial base. We need to develop and modernize internally. This is a choice back to your question. Will we be replaced as the world's number one in 20 years? This is a choice. If we keep fighting these horrible quagmires, if we stop, if we don't develop internally here, if we don't catch up to China, the answer is yes. Given where we're at at the moment, looking at your respective crystal balls, which country do you think is the most powerful in the world in 20 years' time? The United States is the only global power. China's a regional power. You cannot push force into the Atlantic and so on. We can. So we're reaching a world that's very different. That doesn't mean that the United States isn't decline. Certainly, I agree with you on many of these things, but I don't think it's fun and metal to the position of the United States. It is the United States occupied a position in the world, which caused it a great deal in many different dimensions. And I'm backing off from that, reduces tensions within the United States and so on. It's I was thinking that there would be some sort of seesaw probably between China and the US, but maybe there was another player that I hadn't thought about. It sounds like both are in some form of mild decline. They're in flux. So my position is it's up to our leaders, who's going to be number one in 2020. There's three dimensions of global power I would look at. Dimension number one is the country's GDP is a fraction of world product. Right now we're 26% China's 17. But if you look forward here, this could easily flip flop in 20 years. The second is allies. How many friends do you have in the world? Well, look at what's happened with the terrorists. Look at what's happening with Canada right now today. What is happening is in the middle of this gigantic war that we're having with with Iran, we are deciding to alienate friends. Well, who's likely to pick up those friends? It's going to be China. And then issue number three is our technological base, our growth. If the world economy goes over a cliff with our 40 trillion dollars in debt, I think the idea that we're going to invest our way out of this in the AI. I'm just look, maybe that will all work out Chris. Okay. And we're going to be fine with 40. I'm laughing my way through the apocalypse. I don't know about you. Well, I'm just trying to explain these are the problems I want to be worried about. Just a second. Let's see. Let's see if you're messaging. So I think that these past 30 40 years of Pax, America, have been unique in human history. Never before had we had we had a power that could span the entire globe that had had for the first time we had a global reserve of currency. Never before had one nation been able to dictate the global economy. So I think Pax, America has been unique in human history. And I think we're reverting back to the mean, which is more regional dominance. So the way that I examine how nation states thrive or die is using three basic criteria, which is going to be very different from yours. But first, I look at energy. Basically, how hard working are the people? Second thing is openness, which is how open are people to change? How are they? How much are they willing to absorb new ideas? The third is cohesion, which is how much do they value their own neighbor views? If you actually use these three metrics, okay? Energy, openness and cohesion, you find that in each region, one nation will dominate above all else. So in East Asia, it would not be China that dominates, it would be Japan that dominates. It will be in Europe. It will either be Germany or Poland, one the two. Germany is more powerful, but Poland is more cohesive. And you can tell me next week, what would you find? It's more dynamic by far. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's more in danger, it seems. And that's more energetic. Energy. That's right. And then in North America, it's the United States by far. The United States is so dominant that it could like keep on electing Donald Trump and that could face plant its way through the next few decades. Unfortunately, unfortunately, that is the case for the United States. And then in the Middle East, I believe it is Israel, that is most dominant. In other news, have you ever noticed how some websites make it ridiculously easy to buy while some feel infinitely harder? Back in my day, I had to walk 10 miles to the local store. I'm younger than me. Yeah, but my dad got a DUI. 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The momentum, just the sheer size of it, means that there can be issues burbling below the surface that don't get seen for a little while and then eventually the sort of lid gets run up. Obviously, you're talking about civil unrest. I don't know how likely you think civil unrest, proper civil unrests going to be due to this. So I have coming out Chris, a book called Our Own Worst Enemies, America in the Age of Violent Populism. It's pre-order now on Amazon. It'll be available in just a couple of weeks to be in your mailbox. And I've spent five years studying this problem because my work on political violence, what I do, Chris, is I look at where is the biggest threat to America? The biggest threat. So it changes from time to time. And what I started to see after the George Floyd protests, which were mostly peaceful, but what does mostly peaceful mean with the George Floyd protests? When 28 million are protesting and 7% are riots and political violence, that's millions of people who are unrest. And then also in January 6th, this is the first time in our history that we've had a violent mob supported by the president of the United States to try to stop the constitutional process of changing presidential power in the United States. Then we've had the rise of political assassinations and assassination attempts. I could go on and on. This is, I would say, akin to the 1960s. I agree. We've had some periods of violent populism before. The book covers that. But what's different is it's on both the right and the left. The number one fact today is tens of millions of Americans on each side. I don't mean total. Each side of the political spectrum support political violence for the goals that they also support. That's why you're getting support for very aggressive ice tactics against democratic protesters. Even after ice kills those democratic groups. I argue that this is not the first time it happened. We had a civil war. In that civil war, we ripped ourselves apart and then came together again. There's a strangeness in the United States. Most countries that have that kind of civil war could not accommodate itself again. We are historically when we take a look at these various periods in history at each of the throats. It is one of the dimensions of the United States, which is based on the fact that we're We're an invented country. not only in the sense that the Constitution was invented, but that the population was invented. There was no other nations have histories of culture and so on. We constantly came together. So one of the things that the United States is very good at, from the founding, is being deeply divided, because as John Adams said, one third of the people were for the revolution, one third of people were against the revolution, one third of people didn't care. That was his reading. So I see the divisions in a very different way than you do. Well, I don't think it's good enough to say that we survived the Civil War because 600,000 people died in the Civil War. So let's just be clear. We are 40 trillion dollars in debt. The idea that, sure, we'll just have a Civil War and no problem. We'll get out of this just fine. This is the showing how we've got to go to the Civil War standard to say we can survive a Civil War. No, we will not be able to be anything white. We want to be a regional power. I disagree. Profoundly, there's a cultural nature. China has a culture. It has a history. It has an evolution. Britain has a history and so on. Okay. Thank you. When you take a look at what you used to. Well, shut up dude. All right. Shut up. Okay. When you take a look at American history, you measure yourself and your state of your company against something. Otherwise, you're constantly in a feeling of this has never been so terrible. So you have to have a sense of proportion on what goes on. So when we look at the division, in the United States, we've seen World War II, we've seen isolationists and the interventionists. We have constantly approached the world deeply divided. Okay. I saw that mentioned the Civil War because I was the most extreme example. But even the revolution was not a joint universal uprising. It was deeply divided. And my wife's family had to move to Canada because after one day. That's a high price to pay. Well, the point I make here is that one of the things about the Americans is we're constantly having the feeling we're going to hell. We have the ability to overestimate tremendously our weaknesses and underestimate the tremendous strengths. This is where I have to respect you at disagree with you. I look at the past as a measure of the culture and its flexibility and viability, even the pressure. Do you think America is a country permanently and strife internally or is that something unique about the modern world? Well, let me also be clear. My book is explaining we're not heading to Civil War. We are heading to violent populism and we're in the middle of violent populism. Can you explain what the difference is, please? Yes. Civil War is where you have armies going toe to toe. Truly, this is battle after battle. So we start to see the movies on Civil War. These are, I think, the extreme scenarios. And we can talk about extreme scenarios. I hope we would never get there. So I don't find them acceptable. But I don't think that's really what our future is. I think our future is more, we're more in danger of becoming Turkey, for example, where because we have normalized political violence, it starts to become normal for the president to absorb more and more powers under the presidency. And then also to sort of hide things. So this isn't just happening with President Trump during President Biden's presidency. We had open borders, essentially. We had 10 million plus come into the country. And yet, this was all the image was, oh, no, there's nothing happening at the border. It's literally not happening. And that was by a Democratic president. So what I'm trying to point out, Chris, is that we're in a world where because political violence is becoming normal and George is finding it, well, sure, it's just okay. It's just another day in America. This is what the book's about. It's about how political violence has become normal for tens of millions of Americans for the first time since the 1960s. And this has consequences because it's on both the right and the left. And we're coming to an election. And this midterms, we already have, and I was just on many podcasts, we have people who are terrified that President Trump is going to seize ballot boxes. Now, why would they be terrified of that? Because President Trump said he was going to do that in February. So this isn't just coming out of nowhere. And when I'm on those podcasts, I'm trying to say, yes, that may happen, but we will hold ourselves together. And here's how we're going to do it. So I'm not trying to tell you we're heading to civil war. I'm also not trying to tell you civil war would just be fine. What I am trying to tell you is the way you're going to see powers absorbed by the federal government, things like use of martial law and so forth, is because political violence has become normal. It's a normalization, which is the difference on your country. What's your perspective on internal strife in America? Right. So I think like the best historical analogy for the United States right now is a ruined empire. And the critical turning point for the Roman Empire is maybe 150 BCE. And this is the Third Punic War. This is before the Third Punic War starts between Carthage and Rome. At this point, Carthage is basically destroyed. And it's just an economic center. It's no longer military power. And there's a huge debate in the Roman Senate about what to do with Carthage. K to the elder demanded the destruction of Carthage because Carthage would always be a threat to Rome otherwise. Yep. Everyone else was like, no, guys, we cannot destroy Carthage because we destroy Carthage. What happened is we will have no external enemy and we will start to tear ourselves apart. K to the elder one and they destroy Carthage in the Third Punic War. And then when it happens afterwards, complete civil strife. And after the civil war starts, right? We're starting with it starts by 100 BCE. Some of us call the social war. But it never really stops. It's a social war that leads to the rise of Julius Caesar, which leads to the rise of like I guess a Caesar, which then leads to all sorts of wars. So that's a problem with the United States. The United States is probably the most violent country on this planet, like by far. There are more guns per capita. There are more guns than people. And like America is the only nation to play football. Am I quite to say, only Americans believe football? So Americans have this tremendous energy. Hang on, hang on. You're going to have to draw the parallel between there's lots of guns in America and America's the only country to play football. I feel like I've missed something there. Right. What I'm saying is that America is a society that pride itself on the first amendment and the second amendment. It's a society that is by the standards of every other study. It's pretty aggressive. And right. The physical contact violence, like doing, like listening to Metallica and flying F40 and shit. So this energy, you can either, you know, direct it outwards to, to, you know, conquering the world or if you don't direct it outwards and there's a fear that it becomes directed inwards, which could lead to civil war. It could be violent populism. It could be a full, full civil war. It could also be an interest. It shouldn't see very much like the movie one battle after another. But I do think that right now at this point domestic violence is almost unavoidable. What? Really? Why? If you just, I mean, like, you can, you can agree or disagree. But I think there are certain trends that are in place that make internal violence unavoidable. So the first is just the wealth inequality, the financialization of society. This is what I was talking about. That's one trend. But another major trend is the gerontocracy, the baby boomers. So what's happened is that baby, baby boomers, I apologize to both of you, but the baby boomers happen, applies political power. I can make wealth and social status. And if you're a young person, you have absolutely no opportunity. So James B. Calhoun, in 1960s, he ran a very successful experiment called the rat utopia experiment. He basically put rats in a paradise where there would be no pet predators, free food every day. And all that happened was the rats just churn against each other and killed each other. And the reason why is young men, especially young men, they strive for social status. If you don't give them social status, if they're unable to climb the social hierarchy and find recognition and status, they turn violent. And this is just human nature. So we tried to get at this. So this book that I'm coming out with is not, it's a product of this five years of research that we've been doing at the Chicago project on security and threats at the University of Chicago, 20 national surveys. This is where all that millions of dollars. And why we did all that was to try to answer some of the why questions. So we ask questions such as how worried are you? You won't be as prosperous as your parents. That kind of gets at the wealth inequality and the social mobility. Well, we then just find out the general answer to that. We wanted to know, to that. That make you more likely to support violence, political violence. And it turns out, the more you think you won't be as prosperous as your parents, the more you support political violence on the right and on the left. It's a wedge. It drives both sides up. We also asked, remember, I mentioned the second social change we're transitioning from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy? Well other countries in the world, this has played a huge role in political violence. That's why Lebanon, for instance, has had so much political violence over the decades. Well, this is not unique to America, but it's happening for us now, Chris, for the first time. And so we asked the question, are you happy with the transition to a white minority democracy? Or are you unhappy and want to reverse it? And what do we find? If you want to reverse it, you are far more likely to support political violence on right-wing issues. If you want to keep it going, you're more likely to support political violence on left-wing issues. These are not happening in isolation. They're not just swirling around and, gee, it's kind of random why we're having of this rise of violent populism now. There are actual reasons and they overlap with some of what John's talking about, but we're able to get to the data to see, well, let's do some tests here and see. And we really see it in the data. And the answer is yes, and this is why, so it's been very worrisome, Chris, for some time. So a year ago, I published a big op-ed June 2025 in the New York Times. I was explaining this data in this op-ed, and I was warning, we're on the brink of major political violence. And what happens? The Charlie Kirk assassination happens. What happens? We get the rise of Operation Midway Blitz and then Metro Blitz, and that wasn't the first time, Chris. So a year before that, this data was showing a rise of anger to the point of violence against President Trump. This was in June 2024. So I brought it to our National Sheriff's Association so I'm connected with these, so remember, advised White House, et cetera. And I warned them that there's a non-trivial possibility that we're going to see a assassination attempt against President Trump. When did you say this? This was the last week of June 2024. Now they listened, I'm just going to say, Chris, they listened, and guess what happened on July 13th, and then what happened in my phone is it blew up, because suddenly people were mystic. What's gets happening? I thought it literally blew up, but no, no, no, what I'm trying to say is, Chris, this is, so just as my 20 years of modeling of the Iran War has led to some predictions about what might come in advance, we haven't, but that's of course been well known at this point. This is not the first time. My work has been studying political violence, not just in the rear-view mirror, but with an eye toward giving real decision-makers, whether it's chief of staff of the Air Force, West Wing of the White House, FBI, for, I call it strategic intelligence. It's not tactical intelligence. It's where things are heading to see where probabilities of events in the future are shifting. That's my work. I don't disagree with you. We are in a bottom time. I simply put that context of American history and American culture. So if we're doing something that we've never done before, and never done before and recovered from, and so on, is very different from this is unprecedented. So when I look at culture, I take a look at culture itself, at its history, and ask the question, is there a precedent for this, okay? Is this something we've never seen? If that's true, then there's a radical shift possible. If this is a cycle, a process of a cycle that periodically happens and comes and goes and is handled in the past, there's a high probability of a counteraction of a subsiding. So this is why I go back to things that don't seem very relevant because they went away. But if you'd lived through the 1930s with the isolationists deeply in some ways anti-Semitic and everything else, then the tensions that were there, well, I've seen that. So what I've talked about the Civil War, it's just to say this was the most extreme event of this sort, and we've survived. So I ask question, not only is a crisis coming, which I completely agree with you on, but is it in the nature of the culture of the United States to withstand those crises? Yeah, I suppose so. Okay, so your point is this might not be terminal, this might not be existential to the United States. Exactly. I mean, does anybody, even if it was a civil war, there would be some people left, and then you've got a country afterward, like from the ashes, something can come back. What came out of that of civil war was the most dynamic development economically, perhaps in history. With the isolationist argument, we could, no, there's nothing to do with the causality or this is necessary. I'm simply saying to you that if you get a fever, that you've never had before, well, that's really significant. If I know that, and you had another cold, you don't take it that seriously. I'm trying to put this in the context of the American nature. So I'm arguing there's a culture, there's a nature, there's a history. And one thing though, and one thing is, every time we saw it, we were finished. During the 70s, the idea, the killings, the kidnappings, and everything that we'll go on, well, they went away. So I'm saying there's a sickle little process. A quick aside, you've probably heard me talk about element before, and that's because I've started every single morning the same way for the last five years now, which is a cold glass of water with elements in it. Element is an electrolyte drink makes with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. It's a science-packed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium and magnesium. No sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients. It reduces muscle cramps and fatigue, supports brain function, and helps to regulate your appetite throughout the day. I genuinely notice the difference when I take it versus when I don't, which is why I don't shut up about it, and also why it's used by everyone from Dr. Andrew Huberman to Olympic athletes and FBI sniper teams, either the good sniper teams, not the bad ones. Also, there are no questions asked for refund policy. If you don't like it for any reason, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of elements, most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below, heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwism. That's drinklmnt.com/modernwism. So I just say two quick points. Number one is, I want to run the record. I am not pro civil war. Number two. Just want to be. I just want to be. I just want to make sure I'm going to run the record. Number two. No, hold it. Number two. More seriously. So the point of the research of the book isn't just to give histories of the '60s. It's why did the violence in the '60s end? It ends for real reasons. It's not just we burn ourselves out. There were two drivers to the 1960s political violence. They're driven on social change. Drange number one was, we had a massive shift in migration of blacks to the north and the Midwest that were not getting political representation. That was underneath the black riots, Malcolm X, the ballot, or the bullet. And by the mid-1970s, you start to have the black caucus. You actually get some black, now it's not as good as it should be. I'm not trying to say it's perfect, but this is one of the big reasons why that violence comes down. There's a second driver of violence in the 1960s. It's the Vietnam War. The anti-war movement, conscription. What ends? It's just the Vietnam War ends, Chris, conscription ended. We end, in 1973, conscription. I never had to be conscripted. Something structural has changed. And that took the steam out of the anti-war movement. As soon as that's what ended the weatherman, the weather underground, that's what ended those violent protests here, both of those issues end. So my point is, we can actually look today at the social causes, and I can tell you, we're likely to have this violent populism for another 10 years. It's not just. It is another decade of this. Yes, because of the social changes. We can talk about those shifts, Chris. Then I ask you the question, how should end this time? This is up to us, and that's my point. My point is that this is not all in historical inevitability, and we shouldn't just throw the dice to the wind. We should understand what's happening to us, so that we can make more intelligent decisions going forward. It's not just a prediction of doom and gloom. It's things are going in a bad direction. Let's take that seriously, and then let's do something to offset it. That's been my world with mostly foreign policy elites for the last 30 years. I'm now trying to do that with the public. So you reckon there's going to be internal strife for the next 10 years? Right. It's actually a young man's problem. Right now, there's a very popular phrase called "hypergamy". I'm not sure if you know what "hypergamy" means, but I don't know what it means. What are you looking at me as "hypergamy"? You're saying that's because I'm a high-value male. That's right. That's right. Yes. The problem is that the majority of the people in the world are in the same place. of young men are not able to find a suitable mate. Because one way to reduce young men's like violent tendencies is to get married half children and then become productive members of society. But if like, you know, the majority of young men cannot get married, then what's a solution? Will you send them off to war, right? So there are two possibilities ahead for the United States. How do you do with these millions of young men who cannot get laid, basically? Well, you sent them off to war to die. If you did that, if you had conscription, it's possible, they would just rather fight you, okay? So another solution is to colonize North and South America to turn the entire Western hemisphere into a U.S. colony. And I do not already with Venezuela, they'll probably do it with Canada. They'll talk about Greenland. You think that realistically, America would try and colonize Canada, Greenland, and Venezuela. Not just, we're going to take a couple of leaders here and have soft power. They would actually try to do that. Yes, I do because there's no one to stop the United States from doing this. Why wouldn't the United States just take Alberta? What's stopping the United States from just taking Alberta? Is that a war? Is that not, like, Canada has what army? Yeah. Yeah. The reason he's saying Alberta is that's where the oil is. So one of the things, so this is something I was, so with my classes at the University of Chicago, so not for the reason of the exact, okay, yeah, I won't quite go that far. But what I, so having studied violent populism, I watched over 200 of President Trump's speeches as he was running for President 200 all the way through. I went to four of his rallies, which didn't mean you just go to his rallies and listen to a Trump rally. That means you get there at 8 a.m. You're already three hours late because you, and you can still barely see the stage, by the way, and you have to wait 10 hours and you can't move. If you move, you lose your place in line and you're all the way at the back. So that's why those hundreds of people are dropping over there. So what do you do? I surveyed them. I talked to them. I actually literally, that's what it surveys. And so I learned a lot about what was underneath the support for Trump. I also went to Harris rallies and it was easier to get there. You get 330. You still get a seat. So it's a little different there. So nonetheless, nonetheless, what he is describing here, you could see a lot of, in some of what President Trump was saying, he was planting some seeds. Yeah, but come on, you bombastic, this guy gregarious, talky-talky, isn't this a cool toy? Well, that would realistically, he's going to go to China. Hold it, hold it. That was all fine, Chris, until after the election, it wasn't just talky-talky. It got seriously, seriously. Okay, so I'm not telling you, I'm not telling you, I immediately jumped to the conclusion, oh, that would be a 99% likelihood of happening. I work in percentages. Okay, what do you think the percentage likelihood that Greenland, or Canada, or Venezuela are brought into the American remit? I think it turns hugely on what happens with this election in 2028. So if we are internally divided, as I think there's likely to be, I think this external expansion is likely to go down. However, if it turns out that this is not, just we're not internally divided, but we see the Mago Red Wave get stronger and stronger and stronger, there's a very good chance that what Zhang is talking about will come to be, because these are, this is what I mean by it's up to us, Chris. This is wild. I did not think that I was going to find out that we were maybe going to invade Canada and Greenland and Venezuela. Why not? I just, it seems so absurd and this would be, it would be invasion. I agree with you. Well, I'm not, again, the probabilities here, so let's be clear. I'm not saying this is 70% likely, so ideal in the world of probabilities. But if we're talking about where there is a world where this is even a 20% probability, this changes everything. The idea then, if it's even 20% likely, and notice what's happening with Carnie. Notice what's happening with the leaders. I don't think Carnie believes it's 80% likely, but if you watch his speech, listen to his speech in Munich this year, he certainly thinks this is, there's something on the horizon in President Trump has been talking directly to him about moving the border with Canada and the treaty and abandoning the 1908 treaty with Canada. This has been a direct conversation with the prime ministers of Canada in the last year and a half. This is, I don't say it means it's a certainty, Chris, that's going too far, but to ignore that this is then translating into taking Venezuela's oil. Serious war planning now for Greenland. The war planning does an equal conquest, Chris, but I think we're making a mistake to just simply dismiss it as, oh, this is just talk all the time. I wasn't dismissing it. I didn't even know that it was an option on the table. What do you think is more likely China into Taiwan or the US into one of Canada, Greenland, Venezuela? Oh, I vote for the latter with the US, so I think that no way. All of this talk, all of this talk that people, the processes, the microchia, all of the China into Taiwan and the sea. So I've been arguing for a decade more likely that we're going to go into Canada, Venezuela or anything. If China plays its cards right, Taiwan is going to fall right into China's lap. I've been, so President Chen brought me to Taiwan in January 2003. I was one of five air power experts. This was the president of Taiwan. Okay. For a two-day conference with the president of Taiwan. He wanted the answer to the question. This is January 2003. What should Taiwan do if China preemptively attacks Taiwan? Well, the United States is preemptively attacking Iraq. So remember, we had this thing called the Iraq War. Well, for Taiwan, that was a very scary situation. So for two days, I was with the president and also with the top of the Air Force, and we were discussing the no kidding discussions here. And also got windows into their national security. And I got the polls. That is the internal polls, which there was nothing classified inside no NDA. So I'm not revealing anything that I'm not supposed to be. But I'm telling you that one of the absolute issues here with Taiwan is there's a large part of the population that sees growth over there. They're happy to get some growth called Taipei 101. So there's a whole lot underneath this, Chris. It doesn't mean Taiwan is certain to, you know, sort of go in China's way. But what I've been arguing for some time is that if China just continues to grow, then what's going to happen is it will eventually dwarf Taiwan even more than it does today. And a lot of folks in Taiwan are going to want to make money in China. I already talked about that. What I want to do is not deny any of these things, put them perspective. Take a look at a community like the United States, which is a community, common value, so and so forth. Has there ever been deep divisions? How did we handle them? So when we take a look at, for example, integration, right from the beginning of the founding, there was a dread of migrants, the Scottish Irish that came here were marginalized profoundly and so on and so forth. Along with these evolutions of integration and so on and so forth, which we were built on, we needed. There's also tension within those between those who wanted it and didn't want it. The businessmen wanted cheap labor. The others didn't want it. The workers didn't want it. Okay? So we have to enter these from my point of view and I agree with you absolutely on what's coming. I simply have a difference as a portionality that is not as profoundly serious as we who've never experienced it before would want to make it be. There's precedent for it. There's a manner in which the Americans have historically gone through this, my pointing to the civil war or the point that most extreme situation that even that we were covered from. When was the last time that you saw something you would say was unprecedented? Internally in America, I see a long line of continuum, including the tensions that are everything else. But eventually you're using so much artistic license to say, well, you know, this thing has been, it's analogous to something that's occurred before. Is there a time, like I'm trying to work out when that's not that cycle hasn't. Well, my point is before I say this is catastrophic, unprecedented and so on, I have to look back. Most stable countries go through vast cycles periods of economic, social unrest. So it's not a smooth flying anywhere. I leave it isolated. Do you think it's probably normal for the United States president to invade a country with no reason, with no strategy, with no plan at all to win the war? I will say, let me see in three months what happens. First of all, there was a reason. What was the reason? Basically, he keeps going after nuclear material. why? Because I was on staff at times after 9/11 doing scenarios. What is the worst-case scenario? And it was a nuclear country like Iran getting nuclear weapons, putting them on board a friendship and selling New York Harbor. At this point, we've had very few casualties on the American side. And two days ago, a commander of the ROGC, a very senior commander, stood up and said, "We've got to stop this war. The people are not. are suffering and are really else." What I'm saying about this war is, when you're in the middle of it, it's extraordinary. On the other hand, we see one. It's been a very short one. There's been on the American side, very small losses on the. you're seeing evolutions in Iran with very different outcomes. So I simply say, "Okay, step back from this extraordinary event and ask the questions and then ask, is it really extraordinary?" So if the reason was a nuclear weapon, why assassinate it? Why assassinate on the first day of the Torah? Who had it just thought what? Answered what? Because he wouldn't as president, wouldn't listen to intelligence. The head of counterterrorism resigns saying that he will not allow me into his office. He's listening to his rallies and presidents make massive mistakes. He confused the people there as a government of Iran. He confused the killed them. That's not the government of Iran. It's your IRGC. So on the other hand, it's very important to say this war's lasted a few months, okay? We are far from understanding how it will end, but that it will end in certain and so on. So when I take a look at this, yeah, he did a very stupid thing. He profoundly. He's not the first president to do some very stupid things. The only thing I'm saying is that we tend to overreact to things when we don't put them in context. How big of a deal is the Iran? Well, it is the biggest deal since going up against Germany and World War Two. So Iran is the most difficult challenge we've had since Germany and World War Two. So let me give a different window into this. So I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years and in the modeling of the bombing of Iran, I started to do this in 2005 and here's where I partly agree with George. I do this in 2005 because once it is known that Iran is enriching uranium, that's when the military planning of going against Iran really jacks up. And I know because I was teaching for the Air Force in the 90s, I had a lot of experience. So from 79 to about 2002, we have political tensions. Yes, we occasionally do a war game, but after 2002 and three things get much more serious. I start to model the bombing of Iran in 2005. And I did it every year for 20 years. This is my classes at the University of Chicago. And what I lay out the target set, there's all changes. Of course, the target set changes, Fordo comes on. We get the MOABs, so we get the different technology changes and so forth. But the big thing that the modeling always showed is that once we, meaning America bombed the Fordo facility, which only we could do because the Israelis didn't have the large precision ordinance to be able to do it. Once we did that, we would be 90% likely to destroy the center huge industrial, the enrichment capability of the facility of Fordo. But we would have virtually no knowledge of whether we destroyed the 60% enriched uranium, the actual fizzle material. And that's critical, Chris, because building a bomb is a piece of cake once you have the enriched material. Most people don't know that. I also teach my students how to build a bomb. So, so like, take them through the soup to nut. So they really understand, it's the fizzle material. And then the modeling, and this is what I told my class, and I have the slides and so forth, and I put them on my substack. And I said, then what what happened is, if we bombed Fordo, then a year or two later, we would do regime change bombing. Not just come back in bomb in general, we would literally do regime change bombing. And why would you do regime change bombing back to your kind of link and connect all the dots? It's because you would become once you bombed Fordo, you couldn't track for it with high confidence the dispersal of that fizzle material. And we know we have civilian satellites showing that a couple days before we bombed Fordo, stuff's coming out of Fordo, we have civilian satellite showing that Estefan, another site in February of this year, a month before we do the bombing. Iran is digging stuff out. We think that maybe they move the stuff from Fordo to Estefan, and now they're digging it out. So this issue of a nuclear weapon, I think is really quite serious. Now, Israel, I think, is playing a role, but I in my, I think it's secondary because they have been arguing to do this for every year for 20 years. What made the difference here, I believe, was the concern that we couldn't track the fizzle material. And that's still going on to this day. That's why we're worried about pickaxe mountain, very specific. So what all that means, Chris, is we're in an escalation trap. The trap didn't just start with killing the leader on February 28th, it starts with the bombing of Fordo. And that's the stages I published literally several days before we killed the leader. I escalation trap, I laid out the stages of what would come, would kill the leader. Is it following your predictive game plan thus far? Yes, and that's what's so scary about this. And what I'm really concerned about is we're coming now to a serious stage of the escalation trap that's going to start next week and the following week. So I've been laying out on my substack, the escalation trap, the nightmare scenario for how this is going to escalate to get worse. And that nightmare scenario, which I started laying out in July, was the rise of gas prices in the United States. Well, I don't know if you've been tracking it, but in Chicago, they're going up. And what that is doing and what this is doing is it creates the opportunity for Iran to really close and try to shut down Hormuz. Why? So that they can try to damage Trump politically in the midterms to irrevocably destroy his presidency. And what did I say that was going to do? That was going to energize the Trump administration to start fighting back. And what is to what are we going to see literally tomorrow? What's got best is D day. Okay, now it's an economic D day. But that economic D day is the Iran's already talking about further escalation here. If Iran escalates, are we really just going to sit back and say, Oh, sure, we're going to know there's a real danger we're in the spiral phase of the escalation trap. As those gas prices went up, this created a window of maximum leverage for Iran. They're using that maximum leverage to wreck Trump's presidency for the midterms. And I think that what President Trump is doing is trying to figure a way to it's not just how to deal with Iran now. It's what does he do to show he is going to do something as Iran is really doing great damage to our economy and his presidency. We're seeing the collapse of the glory economy because for the past 30, 40 years, there's a very simple deal that govern the world, which is that the United States will provide protection to the GCC and to Japan and return to Japan and the GCC would buy US treasuries. And that was a deal that made their economy so vibrant that GCC now has been destroyed by this war. And because Japan gets most of its oil from the GCC, the Japanese yen is weakening, which means that these two regions of the world that brought it most of what's liquidity, especially in the United States, they can no longer do so. So what Scott Besson is worried about is the GCC and Japan can't buy US treasuries. And so what that means is United States cannot refinance. It's $42,000 debt. This is this is the populous. This is catastrophe. This is not just a short war. We should also take a look at the other side. What Iran is experiencing. What is happening in Iran? There's not simply the United States. There's a significance split happening in Iran. A speech yet the day made by a major leader said, look, our people are starving. We cannot continue this war. The artesh is there, which is the secular army. So in other words, look at this war. Not just from our side and the consequences to us. See the pain on the other side. So we assume that the RGC is super powerful, can continue to do anything it wants as no resistance. We forget that there was about 20,000 people killed in an uprising before the war. Okay. That division is not gone. Iran has been under sections for the past 50 years. It's a poor place for you to be poor. Our Americans are gonna put it up with $10,000 like down gas prices. If you're gonna spend an hour in the gym, you might as well look hot and feel comfortable while you're doing it. And honestly, he wants to be in the background of a TikTok his highlight reel dressed like a chump. Gymshawk makes some of the best men's and women's training gear on the planet and something that I realized a few years ago is that when you actually like what you're wearing in the gym, you show up differently, you train harder, you stay longer and get way more high fives. The hybrid shorts are my go-to. They are the perfect length, super lightweight, easy to wash and dry, and they're sleeveless t-shirts that I've trained in every day for basically the last decade. They're the ideal fit, they're breathable, they hold their shape perfectly, no more looking like Adam Sandler's your stylist. Basically, everything they make is unbelievably well designed. You already know about them, the high quality. You get 30 days of free returns globally, with global shipping and attempt scent discount sight wide. So get the attempt scent discount by going to the link in the description below, heading to gym.sh/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom10, a checkout. That's gym.sh/modernwisdom and modernwisdom10. A checkout. - So for 30 years, I've been studying air power, economic sanctions, blockades. I've focused on American political violence. So again, it's the intersection of these military action and politics. One thing that's very important to know in advance of what Scott Besson is going to about to tell us is since World War I, not going back before World War I, since World War I, even heavy economic pressure alone, I mean, alone without other military force, has never won a major war. Never won a major war. All I want, and there's gonna be a big sub-stack tomorrow as I put this out, all I want is I want the reporters at that news conference to ask a very simple question. So the British blockade on Germany and World War I did not defeat Germany, even though it killed over 700,000 German civilians, and we still had to have ground power to end that conflict. So the economic sanctions on Japan before World War I and then during World War II and then during World War II itself did not stop us from bombing its cities using the atomic bomb and then also Russian entry into the war with ground forces. That's how we defeated Japan. If we look at Iraq from 1990 to 2003, it was our American military that kicks out of Kuwait, and once Saddam was out of Kuwait from '91 to 2003, we had sanctions that crushed the Iraqi economy by 50% each year for all those years, and what did we have to do? 150,000, you see, you get my point. Every time you speak, I feel like I'm trading on eggshell. I'm like, I don't wanna know what comes next. Well, now you know how you feel? Now you see what it was like when I taught for the Air Force, because the-- Fucking awful. That's how they described it, the prison of faith. He gets you in the data, so can't get out. We see Iran as a completely united country. No factions and so on and so forth, okay? That's obviously delusion, because there are always factions and so on and so forth. So I'm not saying that it's economic force, but there were great divisions that we saw before. Those divisions are still there in some ways. So the question is not just the economic consequences, but also the fact that it's very rare to have a country that is totally united in this way, and this is not the country like that. So George, the external force is bringing those divisions closer together, they're not breaking them apart. I did, I profoundly disagree. They can sometimes push them together. Sometimes I say, as we didn't even have time, war. I've seen the-- All I say is what's the case since World War I? All I need is one case. One case? One case where our external pressure, our economic pressure, where we had-- And again, I just gave you-- I have another five. I particularly said, at night, meaning economic pressure. I'm talking about the inherent differences within this vast country. Why does that matter? It matters because when the attacks start to happen and the pain starts to rise, they become more powerful in the sense that others look at them and say, you were right. This was not the government we should have. So did they already try and deprise before? Of course. Of course. No, they killed them all. Now what did these circumstances-- Is that going to stop? Well, this is the fundamental question, OK? How we need is a case, George, just give us-- even a case of bombing. So it's widened beyond military pressure. Where's the case without ground forces bombing alone? It's not the government. And the answer is that the question in my mind is not bombing, OK? It is the disunity of the country itself, which we saw the weeks before the war began. Is your suggestion that if Iran had sufficient disunity inside that the government would choose to give up? Because it's got so much pressure happening into the-- What I'm saying is the government itself, the statement that was made and was transmitted all over the world by this leader of the RGC, a former head of the RGC, that we must not continue this. So I'm saying that as in Vietnam, the government was-- US government was completely, frequently divided on what should be done. At least from what I know, tiny amount I know about Iran, I don't get the sense that the government is going to be too concerned about the quality of life of its citizens to give over to what Trump's pressures are going to be. Am I right or wrong? All I have is one speech from the former president that was published. He is still live, apparently. So when you take a look at a country, take a look at the fragments within our own country, and don't assume that this country is totally united or simply afraid of the regime. The regime itself is divided. We've seen it. Unless this speech that I saw and everything that's translated was made up by something, body, this represented a significant thing. Now, the Pakistani head of the military is coming to talk to the Iranians. If he's really may already be there, OK? There has been talk this morning about Iran being loud to become part of the entity that was created. In other words, wars don't end because of the bombings. I totally agree with you. They grin through political process sometimes within countries. You don't totally defeat them. But we have to be aware that these are human beings. They're not all fanatics to where you die. Well, I think there's a difference between, do we see all of the citizens of Iran as supporting a regime that we are concerned about that might be part of global terror or something like that? I don't think anybody's making that claim. I think the concern is no matter what's going on internally, whether it's divided or cohesive, whether they're in support or against, like the war is going on from the people at the top of Iran and the people at the top of America, regardless of what the people are. But somebody who is a top of Iran, this man, made the speech. But he's no longer in power, right? No, he's not in power. He's not in power, but he has tremendous influence. That's what, look, here's the, since World War I, starts with Giulio Duhay, he wrote a book Command in the Air, mostly has to do with air power. There's been a hope with either economic blockades or air power that air power or blockades without a ground force could incite a popular revolt to topple the government so that we would-- We don't want to do what you do for us. Exactly. And this has been a hope. So no one has it happening. No one, I have not talked about toppling the government. I am saying that the government itself is split in various ways. The RGC is not totally unified as we go into wars. We are not totally unified. And sometimes it's a disunification. We have to take a look at the internals. So one factor that we need to look at is-- that right now, the Iranians have chosen to adopt something called the Mosaic Defense, which is a decentralized command and control military warfare, which means that it's entirely possible no one is in charge of Iran right now. So it doesn't really matter what the people want. It doesn't really matter what the leadership wants. Because you have 31 commanders spread out over the country. And as long as one wants to keep on fighting, we should almost remain closed, and this war will continue. That's a problem. Sounds like decentralization, but it might just be leadlessness in that way. They run the government through consensus. We saw this with the Taliban and Afghanistan as well. So there is different models for how you govern. Some are very rigid top down. Qaddafi ran his government, very rigid top down. That's absolutely the case. Others are more very, very decentralized. fragmented almost I don't think that's where Iran is Iran is in this middle of consensus. And it's hard to see because this is where the Supreme Leader, when he made a statement, remember the MOU? The Supreme Leader made a statement saying that he personally didn't agree with the MOU, but he was going to give it a chance and support those who did, which meant there was a division just as George is saying, and that side of getting a negotiated outcome won in June 17th. That has now been replaced, I believe, by the other side, the Supreme Leader's side. And that's what you see with the replacement of the whole command structure of the IRGC in the last several weeks. It's all in one direction. The MOU was a major turning point because before the MOU, I think George is right, there were these factors. And the MOU was a compromise. And what the Americans have shown is, for the reason, they will not abide by the terms of the MOU. And so the Iranians, like at some words said, screw this, we are not going to negotiate. We are not going to compromise. We're going to fight this to the end. So now the hoofy's happened to the war. And this war is expanding very rapidly. What do you think is the likely outcome of the Iran war? It doesn't end. It what's going to happen is eventually the Ukraine war and the Iran war will merge. Already we're seeing that after Zelensky bombed an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea. And Zelensky was very proud of this. You see, I can do this for the Americans. So it is very likely that all the war powers are brought in. China is brought into the war. Russia is brought into the war. It sounds a lot like the World War III that we said wasn't going to happen at the top of this episode. Except the sort of world. Did I say that? No, no, no, he actually thinks World War III is kind of coming quickly. Here's where I would. So I see the trends that Zhang is saying. I don't want to disagree with the trends. I think January of this year is going to be a focal point moment. January of next year. Of next year. I mean, January 2027 will be a focal point moment where all the actors in the United States, China, Iran, have a chance to reset. Now where they go, here's what I, but why January? Go back to what I just said, which is Iran has a strategy for the US midterms. It sees the oil inventories running down. It sees its period of maximum pressure. The opportunity here is to destroy Trump's presidency politically. Not to knock him out of office, but so that he is the lamest of lame ducks. Well, will that happen or not? We'll know a quite a bit in the first week in January. Now, we won't necessarily know 100%, but we'll know a lot of information. And I believe what's going to happen is once we get to the first week in January, everybody will be recalibrating for a post-Trump world. Now or a future Trump world. How do you feel? How do you feel about this? The problem is we're trying to see this from an economic lens. And the reason why the MOU fell apart is Israel refused to abide by the terms. One of the major terms of the MOU signed between the United States and Iran is that all terms, all piece of terms that apply to Iran would also apply to Iran's allies, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon. And that required Israel to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. Israel refused to do so, and Israel has only accelerated its attacks on Hezbollah. So we think that it's entirely between United States and Iran, but Israel has a lot of options. And right now, for the reason we can discuss this, Israel is choosing to escalate the war. And also the hoofies have been brought in. And the thing about the hoofies is that they are religious fanatics. They are very poor people, they live in mountains, and they're not afraid to die. And right now they're fighting this war against Saudi Arabia, so Saudi Arabia, Aramco facilities are being hit. The other straight in the Middle East, the Bab El Mandat straight has been closed by the hoofies. So we're seeing this war escalate. And again, we're trying to see this from economic lands. But if you look at what the hoofies are doing, if you look at what the IRDC and the Israeli should doing, I would say this is almost like a religious war. It's a crusade. It's an eschatological war. But there's a other dimension we have to see. The alliance between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Now if you take a look at map or all around them, these countries, Saudi Arabia has no use for Iran. The Turks are seeking to evolve themselves into a major point, scaring these Israelis to death. And Pakistan itself is evolving dramatically in this war at the very sophisticated state. So we take a look at the situation Iran. Let's not just talk about the bombing and everything. But the geopolitical development. Now today there was a story, I don't know if it's true or not, that Iran is going to be asked to join this coalition. In other words, submit whether they do it or not, whether this is an actual offer, I have no idea. But it was there. But this created a new structure in the Middle East. This alliance. A very different one with a very powerful country. This real is terrified of Turkey, because they know they don't. It is bombed. Turkish officials in Syria. Yes, and that was part of it, because this is a country they cannot defeat. They've only fought countries along their borders. And they were able for since the founding of Israel to hold those borders. The Turkish army is three times as large as these really army. And while I don't believe that the Turks really have the desire to fight them, these Israeli, shall we say, society is built around a commitment to the belief that they're going to try to destroy us. There is a built-in paranoia. So when this ends, you know, this problem ends a little bit, they bomb Syria. They then tell the American ambassador they didn't bomb Syria. Then they say, Turkey is our greatest fear. Built into Israel. By night, by history is a paranoia. Who is my greatest enemy? I have one. Now they're facing for the first time an enemy that they cannot because of both geography and military capability. Defeat, all right? Now, when Runzad was asked what to do after the battle of bulges, he said, make peace, you fools. And this is the situation that Israel is in. It's an internal crisis. It has reached a point where its military capability is not enough. So the reason I think the midterms are a decisive threshold, not just a minor threshold, is it will determine whether the Democrats control Congress. If the Democrats control Congress, which is still an if, but will know in January, there is going to be two things that are going to happen. And we see this in the Democratic policies already. Number one is, there'll be tremendous pressure to literally end the Iran War. So we saw this in 1974 by Congress. Congress has not played much role in foreign policy. The last time it got involved was 74 with Vietnam to truly constrain the executive. There'll be a battle about this, of course. But number one is the Democrats wanting to shut down this. And that would stop it from becoming a forever war. Which one more point? And then I'll let you. The second point is, they're going to want to constrain Israel. There's a huge push in the Democratic Party to shut down all of the, look at all the Democrats that are, that were pro Israel that are losing. And they're losing because there's a huge movement inside of the Democratic Party to zero out the budgets to Israel. And that means that come January is real is going to have to calibrate Iran others are going to calibrate based on the results of whether the Democrats control Congress. Now we don't know whether the Democrats will control Congress. But what I'm saying is it's too soon to truly project out beyond January because come January will know. Are we in a forever war? And by the way, if the Democrats even know they control Congress, support the war. Oh yeah, we're in a forever war. So which major Democratic leaders come out against the warrants and which leader has said we must end this war right now, which, which leader? Oh, geez, almost all of them. I mean, just watch CNN. They come on all the time. So what they are, if you, if you listen Zhang to the Democrat, no, well, if you listen to the Democratic leaders, this has just been a mantra to end the Vietnam war. I'm sorry to end the Iran war. And the real question is going to be Zhang, whether or not, once they control, will it take responsibility for that? Because right now, it's easy to run against the Iran War because gas prices going up, you know, bad mistakes by the Trump administration, which they hate anyway, where it will become difficult, will be once the Democrats assume power, because if it turns out that the Democrats stop the war and Iran gets a nuclear weapon, think about that for the Democratic Party. That could bring the Republicans right back in in 2028. So, I think these are the real issues, and that's why it's about not just what you claim you're going to do, but what you do when you're in power. So, I must have missed the news, but can you name me one major Democratic leader? Well, Huffing Jeffries was just on CNN. I think it was three days ago arguing that the war should end now. I just listened to the woman who just ran the progressive who just won the Senate for the Senate seat in the primary here on Ford. I was just on a podcast with her on the Joy Reachow just two days ago talking about this issue, and she was hugely against the war and thought it was a total mistake and it should end. So, I mean, those are at least two people right there. So, so that Huffing Jeffries say that if the Democrats were to win the House in November, they would immediately try to restrict Trump's war powers and try to--I haven't said anybody has gone that far. That's the next step. That's the real issue here, and that's what I'm saying is you won't be able to know whether they'll do it until they're in power, Zhang. And if they're in power and they support the war for fear that they will lose their political viability as Hillary Clinton was worried about with the Iraq war, then this will--that's how you got to forever war. You get both parties in favor of the war because neither one will stop it. Now you have a forever war. But in this particular case, both the Republicans oppose the war because that's one of the bases on which you won the election was not to get into these forever wars. Democrats also are doing it where you take a look at the poll numbers on this war. They're enormously unpopular. This tends to do what's popular, and in the war is popular, not only in the Democrats, but with the Republicans. This is the fundamental difference that I've never seen, which is that his own party feels betrayed. So I think there's--one of the things I think the Iranians are saying, "Let's wait. Let's wait to see if they come apart." In the same way I'm talking about Iran having internal problems, we have enormous internal problems. I'm seeing the Iranians trying to put this off as long as possible and then try to make a deal in September or October before the election. So fascinating that Trump's positioning and his desire to be seen as a competent president and obviously the last couple of years of his legacy, that is being used as a geopolitical tool. That's almost a weapon that other people can insert themselves into, because they know that this is going to be--it's a point of weakness or it's a point of leverage that can be used to play with the incentives that the U.S. has got, which they want to push further than they want to pull back. This is something I've seen, and again, advised for White House's 2001 to '24, to Democrat, to Republican' legacy matters to--let's call it the White House, if not the president. I also think the president, but let's just make it that legacy is beyond just getting the next win. Legacy is what you're remembered for, and I think this is what is important that we miss when we talk about presidents in the United States. We think, "Well, you can't run for re-election, again, therefore you don't care anymore about anything." No, I think what I see is, even in their first term, they're thinking about their legacy going forward, and that legacy, there have only been 47 presidents in our history. There's not that many presidents. Not big sample signs. So, I really--well, it's not that. It's that they know. They're one of 47 or 48. It's the other way around, Chris. Because it's a tiny club, their legacy is going to be with them after their dead for a hundred years plus. But if he saw what his legacy, what did he attack, he ran in the first place? I think, again, back to the modeling. I'm just going to keep going back to the modeling because I made a prediction to my classes for 20 years in a row that, once we bombed for a doe, we would panic about Iran getting a nuclear weapon in a way we couldn't see. And we would get intel, whether it's Israel or somebody else, that was showing us they were getting intelligence, and we would try to resolve it through regime change. Not because regime change was magically thought to be a better strategy, but it was really the only way you could come up with even a half plausible idea. Is there a question about why to do the bombing in the first place, though? Yeah. So, I want to take a step back from you. I want to present another theory, besides your modeling. Please. So, 1996 is a clean brick memo, right, and you probably know the people who wrote that, right? Which is for Paul Wolf, Paul Wolf was from my department. Okay. 71 PhDs. Okay. So, I know these people pretty well. So, just for some context to the idiot in the room. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The clinic memo was a proposal to Benjamin Nayahu. And the argument is that Israel, under Nayahu, should withdraw from the Oslo Peace Accords, because in order to assure peace in the Middle East, Israel had to be strong. It had to conduct regime change in Iraq and Syria. Also Israel needed to be self-sufficient, economically and militarily. It needed to basically stop independent on the United States. If you want to resolve the passing issue, then you'd be the crap out of them. Rather than try to compromise and give them land, that would just make them more greedy. Instead, you establish peace-food strength, those are the exact terms, peace-food strength. Okay. So, that's the 1996 clean brick memo. What that's important is, if you look at the clean brick memo, and you look at today, they basically implemented every single point of the clean brick memo, right? At a single point. That's number one. Number two is, what's interesting is, the people responsible for the clean brick memo, Richard Pearl, that is five, went on to work in the Bush administration. And they were along with Paul Wolf, which your friend, the architect, that's going too far. But the people, okay, the people in the Pentagon were the architects of the Iraq War, right? And then after 9/11, what's the clerk, appears on stage with Amy Goodman and Amy Goodman's like, what's the plan? And what's the clerk? It's like, we're going to go after seven nations in five years. And these seven nations include Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, and there's one more. You ran. So, if I'm just looking at it from like a, like top down, for its eye view, I would say that this was always a plan ever since I didn't see the clean brick memo to attack Iran, eventually, because they've been saying this for the past 30 years. And so, is not a good reason to attack Iran? So that was always the plan. So let me, first of all, number one, I agree with your characterization of the cream brick plan. Number two, I agree it was a plan. But I see from 2005 on, and I was working with the Bush administration about how to essentially calm down the Iraq war. So I had many, many interactions here with the Bush administration because I was warning before we did Iraq that we would touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times. We did invade Iraq. We did touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times. And who started my center at the University of Chicago, the Chicago project used to be on suicide terrorism? It was actually the Bush administration. Think about that for a moment because suddenly, somebody made a unique prediction, none of other terrorism expert was predicting that. And I gave it directly to Paul Wolfowitz here. He did Iraq anyway, it touched it off anyway. And so now, suddenly, I'm engaging with, we never put an army in a certain African country, like Somalia, that was a possibility, that did not happen. Certain things that did not happen also are important to know. So one of the things that happened during this period after the Iraq war became a disaster is all that influence by Wolfowitz left, Fife left, Pearl left, and it's because it became widely understood what the real dangers were of going into Iran. But I mean, Iraq was already a problem that Iran is a much bigger, I said, the biggest challenge since Germany and World War II. This was widely understood at the time, and it's widely understood by the military, it's widely understood in both white, Democrat, and Republican white houses. This is not a unique situation here. I think. you really run into an issue with why did President Trump bomb for Doe? So I've talked to the people from the administration who have left in detail about this in May. I think you have to understand one thing, which is although President Trump decided to reject Netanyahu in his first administration, President Trump has become his own national security advisor, his own secretary of defense, his own secretary of state. If you look at all the decisions that are happening, everybody else is essentially executing his policies and occasionally he'll get mad at them and blame them for something. But he's not really following closely the advice of any of those people around him. I think what's happening is that our president, our system, gives the president inordinate discretion when it comes to the use of force. You're saying that this was a personal bias and a whim? I think it was, yes, largely so, but I would say it's because I would say that what you're seeing here is that the style of president, it doesn't matter if he fires Pete Hagseth next week or he fires Scott Bessett next week. Do we really think the style of the president is going to change? I think that we need to understand that we are a system of government. We have given inordinate power to the president. I'm not calling for a change at the Constitution, but I am saying that that means if the president wakes up one day and. On the press the button. And by the way, there's famous Abraham Lincoln, a famous story in a Dorsken Goodlands of a team of rivals where Abraham Lincoln goes around the table, asks the entire cabinet and they all say no, no, no, no, no, and they come to the. And Lincoln says, "I, and gentlemen, the eyes have it." So this is what happened. What does Trump have against Iran? He can't even find Iran on a map. Well, I mean, he can't. I think we've pushed. I like to talk to people directly. I've never, in this case, everybody I've talked to who's been around this, who've actually briefed the president on this, they only go so far in willing to say why he did certain things. And I'm saying it's because of the way he has chosen to make his decisions. There's not the process we're used to seeing here. So what that would mean is, and I've never talked to President Trump, is unless I could actually talk to Trump, I won't go further than I've currently said, but because I do think that this is though how we got here. And once he did for no, I don't know that at all he understood the consequences, but I think then he was sunk, because once he did that, and he sees the satellite imagery I'm seeing in the civilian world, and there's probably more, he knows if they develop, if they test nukes on his watch, man, he sunk for all of his. What's your psychoanalysis? So let's just look at his pattern of behavior in both his first and second term, right? First term, he comes in office, he cancels the JCPOA, which is the Iran nuclear deal under Obama, right? He's like, we're not doing this anymore, guys. That's number one. And then he recognizes. Sorry, then what he does is he transfers the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is one of the most provocative acts an American person has ever done in the Middle East. You don't do that, okay? That's number two. Number three is, he recognizes Israel's control of the Golden Heights. Then the most dramatic thing he does is, in January 2020, he orders the assassination of General Kasam Salamani, who was Iran's defector ambassador in the Middle East. So for those, this seems a logical extension of his actions. He is the most pro-Israel president the United States has ever had, right? It seems like if you just look at the clean brick memo of 1996, and you look at what Trump is doing in the Middle East, it seems like he is trying to create the greater Israel project. Sorry, do you want the greater Israel project this? Right. So the greater Israel project is the idea that Israel should occupy all biblical lands, or the lands that Yahweh God promised to Abraham. And these lands extend from Egypt, sorry, extend from the Nile in Egypt, all the way to Frides in Iraq. So if you look at the entire map of what the United States has been doing for the past 20 years, attacking Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now this war, which promised to engulf Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, it seems like this is all to achieve the greater Israel project. But if he was only interested in Israel, why Venezuela, why Greenland, why Canada, what I have something to do in the week. Well, what I'm just, what I'm pointing out, what I'm pointing, so I agree with you, that's the second most important reason Israel. I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all. I think that what we need to see is that first of all, President Trump is really enthralled with the use of violence, enthralled with the use of violence. He's part and parcel of violent populism. He's both a cause and a symptom of it at the same time. And it's not just in the-- In his first term, he did not start a war. Well, he kept his promise, I will not invite any more. And violent, and after January 6, I think the process leading up to January 6, and then in chapter 5 of the book, I trace this out that in aftermath of January 6, this has radicalized MAGA. MAGA is not the same sort of group, political movement, international policy, not just internal culture. Yes, but once you have, once political violence is normal for you at home, it's a lot easier to use. He was in office from way before. But what I'm trying to tell you is that there's a trajectory that's emerging. It's not that he comes in planning on, you know, in 2017 to do January 6th. There's a trajectory that emerges. And I think that we need to see that, yes, Israel's playing a role, but there's a lot more that he is doing. Do you think the number one reason is this escalating acceptance? Normalization of political violence. It is the thing that is underneath, but there's something else to look at. I think there is also in Trump a fear of a 9/11, and there's in ways it should be, okay? So we take a look at Iran and their relationship with Al-Qaeda, Roon, but still there, something comes to mind at times, which is what would happen if instead of 9/11 happening with aircraft, a ship sailed in with a nuclear weapon to New York Harbor and detonated. So given the ideology of Iran, given the fact that they have nuclear materials and the presence of Al-Qaeda, we can say, we can say all the various things we say about Trump in various ways. And I agree with much of them. There's also a rational fear that can evolve. This is why his fundamental demand has been the nuclear weapons. Now, he attacked them first, he claimed it's succeeded, it failed, okay? And we really don't know, I think for sure, where the nuclear capabilities are, we don't know how to destroy them and we're looking at that. But I think that underneath it, if you take a look at the question of what happens if there's a nuclear weapon, especially the secret one, developed in Iran, given the ideology, what might happen? And I think in many ways, when you look at how we'll be viewed in history, from that, if that were allowed to happen under his watch, we'd be also driving him. Do you think that JCPOOA was working? It didn't fail, what it was working is another matter. The fundamental thing was to de-nuclearize these areas. So if Trump is most concerned about Iran developing nuclear weapon, why did we withdraw from the JCPOA? Because he wanted more control, I think. I have no idea what his been through his mind. He wanted to have his direct American control on that. He thought that would be more effective. When you take a look at his practices, he clearly doesn't go through reliance systems. It doesn't want to have dependence on others. He wants that power to his own hand. He can't have it. He does it as well. I can't psychoanalyze him, but what I see happening is that, and this is something I wrote on in progress. The fundamental fear was the nuclear 9/11, and he keeps coming back to that. If he was afraid of nuclear weapon, he should have avoided three things. One is withdraw from the JCPOA. Second is, do not assassinate the Alito Kamenai because he refused to ever use nuclear weapon. And number three is do not attack Iran. And Trump did all three things. Yes, but that doesn't mean that the operational action didn't have a certain end in mind. In other words, it was rational to be concerned about it, he proceeded irrationally. in action. Yes, and I think the choice set is interesting here. So I agree, by the way, with George, that there's a rational fear of a nuclear weapon with Iran. There is an element of a rational fear of that. I think we could go into live with it, by the way. So I don't think it means that once you're concerned about an Iranian nuclear weapon, the solution is the force direction. But I thought you might. But let me say that what we saw with the JCPOA was not just that Trump ripped up the JCPOA, but he replaced it with a maximum pressure campaign. So what President Trump has done very often in his career, and this is what I would say is, and this is before January 6th, but there's a trajectory here, which is he is more and more comfortable with force domestically and internationally as he goes through his Presidencies, his two Presidencies. And that's what I mean by the normalization of it. It becomes more normal because he didn't just rip it up the JCPOA. He thought a pressure campaign would be better. And I think that he learned from that failure, because it didn't stop Iran, that he should have more pressure. A lot of others of us would say you should learn from that by seeing that the pressure campaign is making things worse. And I think that this is what we're seeing with our President. He finds a lot of comfort in the use of political violence. He also doesn't really understand power. He overestimates what he has. He went into that war expecting it to be readily done. He did not understand the mosaic system. He did not care about responses. So one of the problems I don't necessarily disagree with pressure as a measure. He doesn't understand how to apply the pressure, nor does he have a clear understanding of just how much power he has. My question is, if this is just complete chaos, if this is just one guy behaving irrationally, why all events helping to create a greater racial project? That's my question. Well, and my challenge to you is that explain the Western hemisphere, because if you really want to build the greater Israel project and you look out here over time, what you would like is you'd like President Trump completely focused on the Middle East. And yet President Trump starts out with his tariffs. Again, very, which not quite violent, but again, very aggressive against our own allies. Then he moves to actual military ideas with Greenland and our allies Canada. And so what he's doing, Zhang, is it's not that I just, again, I want to be very clear. I think that Israel is the second most important driver here. This is where I just, I think also with the 2003 Iraq War, some of the people I most respect in the world believe the number one reason we did the Iraq War in 2003 was Israel. I think it's what happened after 9/11. I think 9/11 created an enormous fear of Muslims in the United States, including with the people at the very top. It wasn't only Israel. Right. So one thing that people don't appreciate about the greater racial project is the major impediment to that thing is actually the US military because the US military provides lots of power in the Middle East. The US military provides protection to the GCC. So if Israel were to become the dominant nation, it would need a way to remove the United States from the equation. Right. And let's see, Rand War, it is a solution to this problem because if the American Senate ground troops, which is part of the escalation trap, then the United States would probably lose its war and the United States would be forced to withdraw back into the Western hemisphere. Hang on. Are you saying that Israel managed to convince Trump to go into a run to do the bomb, which then gets into the escalation trap, which means that you need to put boots on the ground, which means that America ultimately loses, which means that America then has to withdraw to make room for Israel. I do not know if this was intentional. I don't know if it's flat, but it's turning out this way. But if you're right, then I did a piece on my professor PAPE sub-stack on this. What will happen if America truly, truly withdraws is a much smaller Israel. It becomes a nuclear sparted. You have to understand how much smaller Israel is. Yeah, Israel is much wider. What if Israel took over Sencom? What if all of America's military apparatus, okay, the planes, the troops, all then became under the control of Israel, which is happening right now, right? Because you have the best, the best vacation right now in the Middle East, which means that all these planes, all this weaponry, is now forced to go to Israel, because it's the only safe space. Under that hypothetical, I agree with you, but what you see with, let's take the Democratic Party, and about a third of the Republican Party is, they're not having that. So what you see is, as that, exactly your scenario, by the way, is one of the big reasons why there's been so much anger against Israel. So there's two actors or two actors that are getting blamed for this war in Iran, which is wrecking the world's economy. It's number one, President Trump, and number two, it's Israel. And both of those are in deep trouble, as we go forward, and the Israel's in trouble with the American public. Israel is losing the American public. Israel is losing profoundly, because Israel has always faced enemies that are good to feet. With this alliance that occurred, with Turkey evolving, Israel is much too weak to do this. Therefore, Israel has to change its fundamental strategy, which to face the fact that it's a small country, in an area that doesn't welcome it, make peace, try to find ways to enter it. So when Israel takes a look at this alliance, it was formed. There are two ways to look at it. One, it might restrain non-state actors. Other, it is a massive alliance that threatens Israel. So at this point, Israel is making very strange sounds like, you know, we're going to do something about Turkey. They can't do it. Remember, this is a situation in which Israel is not found itself in, where it does not have the military power to deal with the threat. So you look at this from two sides. One, yes, I think the Israelis manipulated Trump's thinking. That was very clear. At the same time, Netanyahu has made massive mistakes in overestimating his influence and his power. Do you think Congress will pass the NDAA, which will allow Israel to access data and intelligence from the U.S. military? Not if the Democrats say Congress. I can't imagine that happens. Not if the Democrats. And I don't even think if the Democrats don't, because I think that this is you, and you've been part of the reason it's your attention, bringing this attention on social media. I think it's been very important, Zhang, because I think that the more sunlight that falls on that, the much less likely this is to happen. Israel's grand strategic problem from the beginning, and to this day is it is seven million Jews surrounded by three, I think. Well, nine million, seven million Jews. That's right. Seven million Jews. That is 71 miles wide. Yeah, but seven million Jews surrounded by three to four hundred million Muslims, depending on how far you out you want to count with Pakistan. So that ratio, the only way you can have Israel, the greater project, is with American power. So with if you have American power with draw completely from the Middle East, with the way Iran wants it to be, and that may end up being the outcome, then Israel's in deep trouble. If they can't stop Iran now, and those missiles coming into Iran now, with America's presence still there, what's going to happen a year or two from now? When there's no military from America there, Israel, those seven million are going to be on their own up against those three to four hundred million. I don't think this means Israel, by the way, gets wiped off the face of the map, but I do think it becomes at least a set, it'll be a second year power at best. Israel was successful in wars. It gave an illusion of power. What is evolving now geopolitically in the Middle East is terrifying to these rallies, particularly with the rise of Turkey. At the same time, the United States now wants to withdraw from these various conflicts, and even wants to reduce its reliability on Israel as well, and there's movements in the United States in the public, and also in strategists, and the fundamental crisis in Israel is one that the Americans can't solve, because the American public is not going to go that deeply into it. But there is the possibility of accommodation by Israel. Now Netanyahu does not believe in accommodation, it believes he must use force in all cases. He can't. Now, he's had a peace treaty with Egypt for many years, and its held. The theory that no agreement with the Arabs will ever be honored. In this particular case he's wrong because the Egyptians did. Certainly Saudi Arabia has nothing hostile to Israel. They've been quietly working with them on intelligence matters and a range of things. Pakistan has no fundamental interest in Israel. And Turkey really has many bigger fish to fry as it evolves. Then Israel. At the same time Israel does not know how not to call attention on itself. It somehow always gets into it because its grand strategy has been since its founding. Always attack be stronger than the other guy but they've reached a point where they're not and they won't be. So the question is how does Israel evolve in this situation? Along with how does the American relationship with Israel evolve? Very deep questions for these areas. But I think you're absolutely right that Israel is at the heart of this as a problem. But at this point it's profoundly weakening hour by hour almost. Why is it that Israel's got so much influence over the UN? Oh money. It's money. It's a pact. This is in the Israel-Wabi John Mirsheimer in Steve Waltz book. They lay it out. And it's fundamentally it's a very simple story which is that although anybody can give money to elections, it's a free and open process, it just turns out if you look at all the data that Jews as a group give more money than any other group per capita and as a group. There is a group of all about a third of all money in elections is coming from a very different reason. During Cold War the Soviets had relations with Syria, relations with Egypt and so on. The Cold War was fought there as well. When the Arabs attacked Israel in 1973, it was with Soviet weapons, Soviet trading, many cases Soviet tactics imposed. Israel, at that point, was one of the few countries that was pro-American and who had a strategic point that it could undermine Egypt, it could undermine these things. So remember ever since the Suez crisis, the Soviets had gotten involved in it. The Cold War is over now. These are not relevant to this thing. But it's not simply money or something. That was there too. But that when the Cold War, you take a look at the situation that the Russians had, the amount of influence that had even an Lebanon and so on and so forth destabilizing it, it was deeply involved in the region and the United States didn't have very formalized it. It had Iran as an ally, had Israel as a ally and they were players. So that situation is obsolete. The Soviets are not only there. To answer your question, why Israel wants power, there's an alliance between Zionist capital, basically APAC, as well as Christian evangelicals, which is about a quarter of the population. Among these Christian evangelicals, maybe a minority are Christian Zionists, and they believe that Israel is God's plan to save the world. So Israel has to protect all costs. So you have this massive alliance between Zionist capital and then you have these fanatical Christian evangelicals. So one of the most powerful organizations in the United States is something called Christian United for Israel, run by someone named John Rajji, about 70 million members, and all they care about is Israel. So if you're a congressman, you're saving battle at Israel. You have like millions of people literally calling up every single day, bitching at you, like literally. These are the people who are funding the West Bank settlers and they are the main cause of friction between the Israelis and the Arabs, because these West Bank settlers are just complete nuts, so they're crazy. So you say that okay, in November, the issue will be taught a lesson. But if you got like this alliance in place, right, between Zionist capital, and we're talking like a lot of money, right? They put in like $30 million to defeat Thomas Massing, Ducky, they put in $70 million to defeat Al Saliyat in Michigan. That's a lot of money for a primary, right? They have almost access to unlimited capital. They have someone like Larry and David Ellison who is able to buy up CBS news and install Barry Weiss. So this alliance is almost unprecedented in American politics. So I don't see how just discuss with Israel can negate the power of the issue. Well, you're seeing that Jewish representatives running for Congress are losing Zionist. So it's not just whether they are Jews running for the American Congress, whether they are the Christian Zionists running for the Congress. And one of the big things that's underneath that is that there is a large movement among the right. So most of the evangelicals are on the right. They're not on the left. They're not Democrats. They're conservative. Many of the folks supporting say Tucker Carlson, Joe Ken has run for office several times. They are folks that are extremely unhappy with the role of Israel in driving the foreign wars as they see it. I see it as a secondary factor. They agree with Usag that it's a number one factor. And what they're doing is they're voting the bombs out. They're literally voting the bombs out and replacing them with new people who they think are going to zero out the money for Israel. And I think they're going to hold those people to account. They want that Israel's money to zero it out. Not realizing that the primary use of Israel is obsolete. Syria does not have aversion basis, Soviet basis. Egypt is not a Soviet power. Pot potentially blocking the Suez Canal and so on and so forth. So Israel is once a vital asset for the United States under the circumstances. Surely as long as Israel has money, it's a vital asset for the United States. No, the answer is a lot of countries have a far more money than Israel. Can they put it into American politics as easily as Israel can? If that was the only thing that was doing it, that would be true. On the other hand, if you go back to the Cold War and how desperate it was, the relationship between US and Israel doesn't, isn't based on money and nobody joins it because the Soviets are so powerful there. The reason this is happening now, this anger against Israel is not just it's another forever war. It's because this is the war that's hurting the American pocketbook in a serious way. If you go back since 1991 and you can even go back further, but if listeners will just go back to 1991 and call up on Google and say give me a chart of annual GDP growth or decline in the United States since 1991 to today. They're going to see some great patterns. They're going to see number one GDP growth goes down during the 2007, say housing crisis, COVID, but it does not go down during the Gulf War 91. It does not go down in Kosovo. It does not go down in 2003 when we invade Iraq. It does not go down during the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This war is different and the reason it's different is not just it's another war in a long period of time. It's different because this is the war that Americans are feeling it in their pocketbook for real. So if it is a case that the American public is turning against Israel, I certainly hope so. How did Thomas Masi, who was one of the most ardent anti-Israel voices? Trump. Trump won after him in a big way. So Trump targeted Masi and he targeted Marjorie Taylor Greene. He targeted Masi and when you targeted by Trump and we know this most from Marjorie Taylor Greene, this means assassination attempts against you and your kids and your families. So this isn't just a small, this isn't just a political targeting we're talking about. So, so let's summarize what you're saying. Number one is you believe money has a significant impact on American politics. Oh yeah. And Zionists have a lot of money to say that. Okay, that's number one. Number two is Trump is very powerful within the Republican Party. So if he targets you, whether you be Thomas Masi or MTG, you will lose. Right, but I think Trump's influence is waning. I think it's up for grabs between now and January. That's what I'm saying and it's what's driving the escalation trap. His desire to hold on to power is what's really driving the escalation trap between now and January. And I am willing to, I definitely agree it's an uphill battle because of all the money and all the sort of institutionalization as you are explaining it. That's all true. However, that can crumble within a period of just just a couple of years. I don't think this idea that it will take five or ten years. In fact, by 2028, I'm expecting there will be a candidate for the Democratic presidency of the United States that will be avowedly anti-Zionist, not just kind of on the edges. And I think this is just-- I think that's what they'll almost run on. I think at least one person, because, yes, almost run on, because somebody's going to be blamed for all the wreckage of this Iran war. And who are you going to blame-- Why wouldn't you just blame Trump? Because Trump will already be toast by that point. This wreckage is going to go on for a while. You need an active candidate that you can tell. We're not going to be done blaming people because, you know, Iran-- So this Iran war is one of the biggest messes in modern history. What's the biggest mess? It's the biggest mess since we have had in our country since really go back to all the way world war one. There's no bigger-- Biggest mess in 100 years. Yes, not because of the casualty. So we're used to-- But it's basically been at least on-- It's the economic consequences that are so big. And as you're hearing, and I agree with his economic analysis, here he's talking about massive economic-- The cleft all the way on me. Oh my gosh, it's massive. And I hope he's wrong. I mean, this is where I'm predicting the other-- You're predicting the other. And I think we each hope the other is not quite right. But I am really concerned with his analysis because I can't chip away. I brought Jeff Curry on my substack to do these, you know, sort of like what you do here. Because I think he's just an amazing economist and so forth. He's right there. What do you mean? So he's right with it. Can you-- Can you raise-- Can I like to say-- Okay. I agree this will be the biggest price if it doesn't end. If it ends, it'll become like those other wars that we've had in past and it goes on. The fundamental question is, how does it end, how could it end, and so on and so forth? We don't understand-- I don't understand fully the nature of political systems in Russia or in Iran and how they continue to wars. So before we're ready to say this is the biggest disaster, I would say, yes, if it continues, it will certainly be that. So far, it has not created the kind of crisis in the United States, for example, that Vietnam did by far. So it's a question of how does this end? How long would it have to go on for if it goes on for another year, would you say it's the biggest crisis? I have no way to see it, because I don't know the consequences, nor do I know how to fool the thought or what will happen to the straits of our moves and so on. So if they were in the straits of our moves and so on, if they were secured and the war went on, it might have one path and this is another path. But don't you see, George, that Trump's effort to end the war quickly with a victory for Trump? This is what is likely to create the pure victory that's going to go on and on. The answer is, I probably agree with you, but I'm not certain because I'm not certain about how Iran is evolving. So I agree with you, certainly, that if this war continues, the consequences will be massive. I also agree with you that Trump will have a great deal difficulty and the good on his own terms. But there's a variable there that we have to take seriously. The internal capabilities. We do have to put some probabilities between now and November, which is what, 75 days, I think between now and November to expect Iran to implode, which is possible. I would say possible, but I wouldn't even give it a 10% chance between now and November. I think they're using the election to try to force Trump into a position that he has to end it even by making massive confessions. We agree. There we agree. So does the likelihood of Trump voluntarily ending it? Well, I think this, without more, all right, zero percent, zero percent. Yeah, I didn't know what you were seeing in the past. It's the opposite. He is more likely to use force, or in its starting with economic force, to get a symbolic victory. And I don't think Iran is going to play their part. Iran is just not willing to give him the victory that he can want. Yeah, they're giving him. So in the same way that we say, Trump doesn't have the power to do these things. We have to take a look at power of Iran as well. So one of the things that Trump wants is to end the war and not be a crippled president above all else. Iranians seem to be operating, trying to push it out. Now, come to October, he can't, the president cannot make a deal. They're trying to force him into a position that they're succeeding because he understands he's going to lose power if he continues this. So now we ask the question, psychologically that I can't answer, was Trump care more about remaining powerful as president, or more about beating the Iranians who are going to start the war. He wanted to be successful. I have no idea which way he goes. But the Iranians, I think, are sophisticated and are using it and using the election as a bargaining chip. If Trump wants to win this war and bring world peace and prosperity, he needs to do two things. Okay. Here in T.U., this war will end, the United States will come up on top and these two things are one, give $2,000 to Iran, $2,000 to Iran, $2,000 to Iran, not a big deal. The second thing is control israel, embargo israel, saying like if you misbehave, we will cut off arms to you guys and we'll no longer support you, right? So if Dwarf him lebanon, stop these seven wars you're fighting right now. Come to peace with the Palestinians. So if he does these two things, he will be remembered as the greatest president in US history. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. First of all, first of all, I think, so I think that the problem with the plan, first of all, I think that, um, containing Israel is becoming more and more part of President Trump's repertoire. He's not doing as much as I think he should be, but it's become the bigger part is your first point. The key problem President Trump faces is he's trying to end this conflict between now and the midterms, or now and say January, but really now in the midterms. And if he were to give two trillion dollars, what would happen is around would say, sure, we also want you to pull all your forces out. Fine. Trump pulls all the forces out. And hold it, hold it, and two trillion dollars. And what then is Iran going to do? It's going to likely topple the governments in the Gulf States. It's not going to sit back and say, oh, sure. Because it got free reign because there's no other side because there's a power vacuum. What is created, what's been created now and this would make it even worse is a power vacuum, where it used to be America preeminent is real on the rise. Iran declares, well, now the power vacuum is because this is changing. And what's going to fill that power vacuum is critical for the future. Iran, if under your plan, they will fill the vacuum for Iran. And this will wreck Trump future. This is the, it's not just Trump won't viscerally do it. This is just going to rent Trump's future. I did not say give Iran to two two hundred dollars of gold. I say give them two trillion dollars, two trillion US dollars, which means that it's going to be worthless. Anyway, if you want the two hundred dollars deal, no, you want to give them a secret deal. You want the two hundred dollars, okay? You need to participate in the global economy. You need to make sure the middle east is able to send oil to East Asia. Well, this is a version of JD Vance's idea of pay for performance. And as I argued before when the MOU was coming up, I advanced this whole approach to this as a business deal. I think was completely misguided. What Iran is doing is not a business deal. Pay for performance like playing a football player. What they want is power power is what's at issue. So that's why I'm describing is there's a power vacuum. Who's going to fill the vacuum? It's not about the money per se. It's about power because in international politics, that's what determines outcomes. 20 years ago, there was a philosophy in Washington called neoliberalism. I'm not sure if it's still around, but the idea was that trade would promote peace. Right. So if you wanted peace in Middle East, you just trade it with Iran. Iran has a lot of oil. You let them sell the oil and then you have peace. Yeah. Is it going wrong with that idea? There's nothing inherently wrong with it as long as you had a big protector like the United States. They could enforce the stability on which that deal rested. And this is your point about how globalization is coming unglued. So I agree. I wrote a piece in foreign affairs laying out that what's happening with the Iran war is America as protector of the global rules of power, meaning stability for commerce is simply coming unglued. So it's not just here in the Middle East. It's going to be around the world. and what in '91, when America won this stunning victory in the Middle East, it wasn't just confidence that America could police the sea lanes in the Middle East. There was confidence America could police the sea lanes globally. That's why trade went from 38% of world product to 62% of world product. Think about that, because it became cheaper to trade. You didn't have to worry about instability as much. Now, instability is back. What does that mean? Trade is more expensive, more risky, insurance rates. And what does that mean? Anything that becomes more expensive, you get less of it. Do you think Trump's really serious about pulling out of NATO? Oh, I don't think it even. I think NATO's already dead in terms of the key element of NATO, Chris. Is it not symbolic to do that? It's not about that. NATO at its core is not just a political alliance. What's in Article 5 is that once Article 5 is declared a U.S. general, there's no other decision. It's a U.S. general, secure, who commands all the NATO troops, not just U.S. troops, all the NATO troops, the British troops, the German troops, France not in NATO for this reason. And that is what NATO is. NATO is a unified. It's a war-fighting unified alliance where you decide in advance the Americans call the shots for everybody. Who's going to be in Europe is going to after what they've been through? Who's going to let America run British troops? But you also remember that the Americans don't want to be exposed there. Always when you're looking at Trump, okay? And he was serious about these forever wars that he clumsily, stupidly, got involved in one is true. But he hit a fundamental principle of the United States. We did not want to be involved in these wars and these endless wars that we lost. It never helped. There's actually a much simpler reason. Trump really hates the Europeans. He hates the Europeans much more than he hates the Iranians. He blames ISIS. He blames the Europeans for his 2020 election loss. He thinks that Obama can spark the Europeans to defeat him. That's why he went out of NATO. I'd be doing a patriotic to service if I didn't bring it up. Is the UK ever seriously going to be considered in discussions of world powers moving forward again? Well, if you. So I look at percentages of a country's world product compared to world product. If you look at the UK in 1990, that was around 6 to 6.5% of world GDP. What is it today? Just under 4%. So what's happened since 1990? So again, I track power with some key metrics that we can observe. And in 1990, America was 26% of world GDP. China was 2% and the Europeans varied from about 5 to 7% Germany the highest. You look today and America's flat at 26. China's up from 2 to 17 and what's happened to all those Europeans? They're down by a third or more. Who's the sucker here? So people say, this might one of my complaints against this argument that America's uncle sucker. No, we played the Europeans here, not the other way around. And Japan. So this is why I don't worry about. Japan was over 10% of world's GDP at that point. Where are they today? 4%. So if you just, this is all world bank numbers, people listening can go and Google it. You will see that we have been enormously privileged by this period called the Cold War, which this war is ending at the expense of other countries. One of the things you should put out of it is that Japan responded by massively increasing its military power. So it did not simply look at us at the United States to say, where are you going? It took action and China worries great deal about Japan. The Europeans thought it was in a moral act and proper to want to pull back and depend on. The American point of view was the EU is larger than China economically. There is no possible reason why we should be the primary defender of Europe. That was a fundamental reason for many years, but why now? So I don't think this should be put in a Trump load. I think without Trump, this questioning of whether or not we should remain exposed in NATO and what NATO should evolve into would have been put on the table by any president at this point. The China example is very much what Europe should have done. We pulled back from that. Japanese created a much greater force along with the Australians and along with the Vietnamese who are now involved in that too. So many things are happening. So I think there are limits to what we can blame Trump for. We mentioned this earlier on. Why wasn't it really blaming Trump? I was just showing the whole in the argument. I'm simply saying that there's a very reasonable redefinition of Europe after Ukraine defeated essentially Russia. We mentioned this earlier on changing demographics specifically in China, but this is happening globally. It looks like global population is going to peak 2100, something like that. Maybe we'll wait to quench happening not just in the United States, but in Europe as well. At the bottom of 10 billion maybe. And then it's going to do this unless there's some intervention that we can't yet foresee. When it comes to you guys planning out how you think about the future geopolitically, how much of a curveball is the potential changing demographics. Obviously we've got AI and robotics and automation coming in at the same time, but what it seems like China is doing is basically trying to speedrun using humans to build robots so that the robots can replace the humans once the humans have fucked off. How do you think about global population decline playing into your models moving forward? So this war in the Middle East, people don't really appreciate the geopolitical consequences. So right now we're about eight billion people, but if you talk to economists, they'll tell you that the Earth by itself can only support about two billion people. The way we get around this is with fertilizer, right? So the Middle East is important, not just because it provides cheap energy, but also provides a lot of fertilizer to the world. I can't remember the exact number, maybe a quarter to a third of the world's fertilizer. So if a quarter to a third of the world's fertilizer goes offline for a year, then you're going to have lots of people starve to death. So there's no way we'll reach none of the people. You will see massive starvation throughout Africa at some point. How do you think this is going to happen? You don't think? I think it's baked in already. So I agree, maybe for a slightly different angle on this, which is, so I think about power, balance of power. You're hearing me come everything from a balance of power perspective. That's why sometimes agree, disagree with the other. But from the balance of power, what's happening? America was preeminent from 1991 until this war. America is being knocked back because for the first time since 1991, a state beat America. Just think about that. And everybody's learning that lesson that America can be beaten. Well, that means America's global influence that we call it the world empire. You can call it American hegemony. This is now fading fast. What's going to replace it, we could say it's multi polarity. I think it's going to be more fragmented than that. I think you're going to see, you might even call it a emerging anarchy that's going to occur. And under those conditions here, this is because the states that used to be under America's protection, they're not under America's protection before you're talking, we're talking about Japan building force. And notice, we're not saying Japan getting America to come and help it. We're talking about Japan on its own. Many states around the around the world are thinking this way. That's what I mean by an emerging anarchy. It's not really quite a multi-poor world. It's more fragmented than that. Who would be the pole? It'll be a sitter. US and China have a lighting interest fundamentally. And we are seeing that diplomatic process playing out. I think it will succeed with an understanding. But at the same time, China is not the Soviet Union. It doesn't occupy countries. It uses economic influence in those countries, investments and so on and so forth. So it's a very different country. Not too different from the United States in the way it operates as well. Although, you know, it actually operates with more military power. But in this emerging anarchy, you will see greater incentives for nuclear proliferation. For example, with greater incentives, and you've already saw that was Saudi Iran, Saudi Arabia, you will see these incentives start to spread as a result of this war. What will also happen as a result of the incentives for proliferation is concerns about preventive wars, preemptive wars to stop that. So we've worried about, for some time, Poland might start to think about. going nuclear. People are already noticing Putin has been focusing on Poland. Why would Putin focus on Poland? I'm going to die now. Next week to meet the president. There you go. I'm scared. If you're going to mute. The answer is Poland is the eastern front of Europe. It cannot trust the western front because it's the alliance of the willing, and with that statement, that shows it. Poland is evolving dramatically and it has the capability and is discussing becoming a nuclear power. There you go. The question of, because what I talk to them, I can't really hear it back, we're not counting in the United States. We have 10,000 troops there, but we're not counting in the United States. It's evolving dramatically and it's going to be looking at that. I agree with you that the need to have nuclear weapons, or the supposed needs to have nuclear weapons, will create it. At the same time, I see the economic alliance between the United States and China. I think that's going to happen is going to create a strange pole between the two because they have very similar interests. I don't disagree with Zhang. What I'm saying is we're moving to a more war-prone world. Well, the world is a fairly full of war for a while. This is about to get much worse. What are the places that you're keeping an eye on with regards to conflict that aren't just going to expand from existing ones? North Korea. North Korea is a big one. If I'm North Korea, and I'm poor, but I've got nuclear weapons, and Japan, China, South Korea, are all distracted, why don't I just extort everyone? Hold a gun to everyone's head. I'll just blow you all up. China itself has tensions with North Korea. Why is it the case this, whatever you want to call it, global quasi anarchists world? Why? Why is that happening? Because we have lived under a certain amount of stability from 1991 when the Cold War ended, that Cold War conflict receded. It was immediately followed by the First Gulf War, which showed America could easily beat Iraq, which was a power trying to control the world's economy through oil. Now, people know that Daddy can't look after everybody. Daddy can't take care of you anymore. Daddy's either too old, baby boomer, so maybe you know, the two-year-old Daddy's too old. And he's not comfortable anymore. And he doesn't have always marbles. And also a certain other thing, Dionysus doesn't want their role. So it's not only they can do it, it doesn't want to do it. So it's strange to think that you can have a globe with a bunch of different nation states, individual countries who are competing with each other and sometimes in tension with each other, but you still kind of need somebody in charge. Yeah. And now there's nobody in charge. So, you know what, if you go back to 2000, the world was perfect. But then, I'm serious, the world was perfect in 2000. Pretty perfect. And then the next day, it decided to go invade Iraq, Libya, Syria, and create all these chaos in the Middle East. And then it started to sanction Russia, NATO started to expand Westwards. And then you have this conflict in Ukraine, between Russia. So, I mean, I think it's hubris. So it's not just the United States becoming exhausted, it doesn't want its power. I think it's also hubris. So this makes the Iran war even more stupid. Oh yeah. It sort of expedited something that was already kind of quite predictable. And the war is in conflict for years. This was the one I modeled for 20 years, year after year, in and out. And it was because this was the next German. This was the biggest problem, if we took it on, that we would find for United States since Germany. That's what I'm asking. We're trying to we're trying to tell you the reasons, but we will be debating this, Chris, for decades. If it's something like that, I will agree with you that if it extends, it will be on that. It has not extended. Let's not overestimate it. I understand on that. But if you say this is a insane move, which if you give it enough time, and it's not that much time, presumably 18 months or two and a half years or something like that, it's a really big deal. Like if you, we don't need to worry about it, it wasn't that big of an error if we don't reach the end of the gang plank. It's like, no, no, like you're already on the plank. You're walking this water, I decided this. If you just about managed to turn around and the difference between life and death is how far you go down the plank. I'm the less confident about the decision. It really is like, oh, this was the worst thing you could do. This was absolute, yes, and I think this was where the real issue with President Trump, walling himself off from anything like strong advisors. So if you just look at the advisors around Trump, I'm sorry. This is just an extremely weak group of advisors. It's not that many harp as well. Well, I don't want to get into the Vietnam was far worse than this war from the American point of view on it. A global point of view, it was not that terrible. Exactly. But for the Americans, this was deep moment. That's why after Vietnam, we could just shift over to deal with Europe, try to defend the Europe from the Soviet Union. This war, we're not shifting. If this turns out, if history looks back and does its analysis and finds out that one guy, one morning, just decided to press the button. Yes. Like that. What was the motivation? Was it some deeply sought after analyst fuel thing? It's like, no, some guy just woke up and decided to press a button. You will think, how was it that we allowed power to be centralized so much behind them? There was a few ones. There was a famous commercial by Hillary Clinton in 2016, which is the red phone is ringing at 3 a.m., and that means that was the phone to the nuclear weapons. Who do you want to answer that phone? This is the way we built our constitution, Chris. One person makes that decision. But I would argue that don't overestimate. If you extrapolate all the way forward, but see the forces that are making Iran itself consider what to do and so on. So yes, if this war continued, it would have massive effects. It already had significant effects. On the other hand, do not assume that we understand at this point just how far Iran can go as well. Yes, one man started this war, okay? He's failed to win it, but do not assume that this war cannot end except go on forever. I very much hope that it does. When I say January, we'll know the answer to that. It's January kind of a point of no return. It's an inflection point because in January, either President Trump will have the wherewithal to be able to continue the war or he won't. That's because of the Democrats in Congress. So the Democrats will either win Congress or not. If they win Congress, they'll either act to shut down the war or not. We will know this in January. Okay. The damage has already been done to like a lot of the facilities, the energy facilities of this is up in shutdown. It's going to take them almost six months. Let's assume the war ends today or tomorrow. It takes me six months to restart all these facilities. Yes, well then six months it'll get better then. So we're talking about a fundamental shift in nature of life on earth, which could happen, but not in this short or run. Well, well, wait a minute, but he is, I don't think the two of you are as far apart because remember you're speaking in very, very broad strokes. What he is saying is that even by January, my threshold, he's very concerned about the debt crisis. He's very concerned about the world. He's worried about the world economy. And your point is even if we have a world recession or depression, we'll recover. You two are not as far apart as you might think, but the point is I think that we are at a bookend with this war. The one thing that won't come back is confidence in America as the protector of that global system. That's not going back for decades. And this is exactly what we in Texas want because we hit because we served during the cold war at the full to gap. And there's really a desire in the United States in the public not to have this role. Among those of us working this, this is a natural thing to shoot, we should have this role. But when I talk to my neighbors, the idea that we are responsible for the world. And one of the reasons is hostility from the Texas Republicans, with respect to toward Trump very much so, is that he did what he promised he wouldn't do. Get us involved again. Yes, and I'm not arguing for taking care of the world to take care of the world. I'm saying that America's primacy is not coming back. Is there any? And again, I will say. That's not the strategy for American. Well, the economy losing the, if we are, if this is right, then the future of Social Security is not long for this world. And that's a tremendous problem. I have a 97-year-old mother-in-law. And I am seeing already that we are horrendous in this country at, I've been taking care of people in their 90s. And we're going to have more people living in their 90s. What if Social Security goes away as a result of this war? I don't know how the connection had been made that would be possible. Well, this is more his area than most of it. Well, I would argue that the American production and trade and everything else is critical to the world. It's the debt, it's these financial underpinnings that are being stressed. At their critical. When you look at world trade, you look at who consumes it and who can't consume it. You know, I say, still has a role. Artificial intelligence now comes for 50% of GDP growth in the United States, 50% of GDP growth, or at least AI data centers. Guess who's financing these data centers? The GCC. So imagine a scenario where this work continues. The GCC is not only able to provide any financing. The bubble, the AI bubble burst. You have like millions of unemployed Americans. I mean, the consequences will be very dire. There's different models that may play out that maybe one of them. But I see it happening somewhat differently, which is that the United States, dominating the Western hemisphere, not having the price to pay in terms of defense and everything else may well get by. So the issue here is not that the world isn't changing. I think we all agree that a radical new system is emerging. We may not agree on what it would look like, but certainly going to be different. At the same time, I don't view this evolution as catastrophic from the American point of view or from the global point of view. Is there a conflict, or a war, or an area of focus that everyone's preparing for right now that probably won't happen? Is there something that a lot of attention is being paid to a type of war? Nuclear war will not happen. Why? Because there's no incentive for these nations who blow themselves up. Mad. Yeah, it's madness, right? Usually sure destruction. Yeah. Which is why we haven't had any such wars, right? So I don't see any scenario where nuclear weapons are used, even tactically. I think that before the war started on February 28th, I put the odds of a nuclear weapon being used by the United States in this conflict, because I model for 20 years as under 5% by Israel at about 15%. So just to tell you where this has been, I've now essentially been doubling those over time, because the nature of the player, so the modeling is agnostic to the decision makers right over time, because you have different presidents come in. But what we've already seen is that President Trump is already inordinately looking into nuclear weapons. Adolfan, which is a nuclear arms carrying submarine by Israel, Israel moved it into the Red Sea within firing range of Tehran. Now these are not by themselves. These are just movements. So I understand that. But nonetheless, these are encouraging Iran to move forward to do nuclear tests. So as you look at I'm not saying, so as you just look at strategic interaction. So that's what a model is. It's not just one player, it's strategic interaction. The reason I've up my percentages is because I've seen actions by Israel in the United States that I believe are increasing Iran's incentives to do nuclear tests. And that once Iran would actually literally prepare to do nuclear tests, if we see those coming, that is another interaction. So that's my dynamic that I'm concerned about. But it's not at the level of 50-70%. Right now Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons because of a fat one place. So for the fat one to be rescinded, the supreme leader would need to organize a council and they would need to-- There's no chance that they could subvert the religious doctrine. It's a theocracy. It's saying, let's ignore the first amendment of the constitution. But that could be arranged pretty quickly. Well-- And they're about to withdraw from the NPT possibly. So they're already talking about what-- Right. So these are these-- They under the hood actually-- They first actually broke that fat one. According to their system. So Iran would only develop a nuclear weapon if Israel and the United States were to attack first. But if you're-- Sorry, if you're Israel and the United States, you use it to do nuclear weapons, say, maybe on Iraq's mountain, right? What do you see-- Building the liberal nuclear weapon is much more complex than testing one. You have to have all sorts of elements come together. It would take time. Well, they're more-- For hydrogen, generation two weapons, but not atomic weapons, fat man and little boy. So fat man and little boy are-- Yes, but the lumberies graduate. Well, no, fat man and little boy are delivered on-- was delivered on aircraft. This was not a put into them. The second generation was miniaturized to put into the missile. Absolutely. But once we look-- I simply am saying that developing a nuclear weapon and testing it makes certain works takes a bit of time. Well, if North Korea-- The 2012 poorest country on the planet can do 60. Pretty sure this country can conquer this over a period of time, yes. Well, just pointing out it's-- you're raising it to the bar. It must be miniaturized and look like R. If once we go back to World War II level nuclear weapons, which just after keep in mind, killed well over 100,000 people in those two-- Do you use North Korea in nearly a problem? Do nuclear program in North Korea lasted many years? Well, that's because I went to miniaturize. I'm just pointing out that Iran may go much more quickly to a time ago. What I think I want to do is I see the risk of nuclear war, even with Iraq, down the road with plenty of time to do it. Just we're talking about things you're afraid of. If we try to test two nuclear devices, I think that the odds that we're going to look at those two nuclear tests. Let's say it's in October, super. If they test two nuclear weapons in October, are you telling me, George? No. We're going to look at those two nuclear tests and say, don't worry, folks. If they test two nuclear weapons, you're absolutely right. I am saying, however, knowing something about developing nuclear weapons, that first test will probably fail and so on and so forth, there is time as all I'm saying. Okay, nothing more than that. What should people be paying the most attention to? Let's say the next two years, something like that, people that are listening, what are the warning signs, nuclear tests coming out of Iran, one of those, what are the little hurdles in terms of timing? You mentioned November, you also mentioned January. What are the bad signs or some of the good signs? Just what should people be paying attention to? If this is the sort of change which occurs, what would be the big inflection point that you guys are paying attention to? Well, the number one inflection point I'm tracking and again, building on what I just told you about January, is whether we will see the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress and seated peacefully, seated peacefully. So we need to understand that what we saw in November 2020 was an election to not go present Trump's way. Now, we have not seen President Trump as President, have that happen again. He is about to be President and we're going to see in November 2026, will election not go President Trump's way and if it doesn't go President Trump's way, is he going to do anything to disturb the process of it going and that will go on for months because the election is November 3rd, seating the Congress is January 3rd. I see that. That's what I'm really focused on because if that goes south, all of these issues are going to get much much much well. I see the positive one evolving is the US, China, economic, ontant, and reducing tensions within then. If those two countries get together, the global system changes possibly with proper presidents, stabilizes in a different form. So I'm looking at that as the most critical thing coming. My question is will the United States target critical civil infrastructure in Iran next one or two months? If the United States starts targeting power plants or this election plants are mass, this war is not out of control. We are now beyond the escalation trap. It's complete madness. Even if it's done remotely, it doesn't need to be booked. on the ground. It doesn't need to be nukes. If the United States targets Iranian power plants, Iran will target in any way. In any way, Iran will target all of the Middle East energy infrastructure. The pipelines, the energy fields, and it's easy to do with drones. I agree with this. I just put the internal problem a little bit higher, but I agree with his assessment that, and this is part of my nightmare. And it's not like these two things are existing separately. They actually go to get, that's what I'm trying to say. These things actually go together, and then I gave this presentation to my sub-stack about the four steps that would be the nightmare scenario just in the Iran War. And this is the critical step, because once you hit, and when I taught for the US Air Force in the 1990s, targeting electric power plants was one of the critical things we studied for months and months. We fortunately did it in the unclassified world so that I'm able to talk about this. We brought in people that ran the power plants, the engineers that built them. So I have a fair idea of the different places you would target the plants, what the consequences are. And there's a great paper that people were listening by Thomas Griffith called "Targeting Electric Power." He was a military officer when he wrote this paper. It is the best paper on the consequences of targeting military power. And on my sub-stack, I wrote a lengthy piece, "What targeting Tehran would really mean for the people of Tehran?" When you take out the electric power in Tehran for a month, and I walk through it. Not good, I imagine. Starvation. Oh, my God. Starvation. Oh, yeah. It's much because so much of the food, 25% of the food in Tehran, is under refrigeration. And that includes all the supermarkets. There's so much that is, and then you really start to run out of the ability to pump water. So things like water pumping stations in the Middle East, where you depend on water. So there's so much of detail underneath this summary of droughts, starvation, massive accusations of the city. But where did these 10 million people go? It's not like they just run to some other place and turn on the faucet. So this is the targeting of electric power is much worse than most people. Oh, my gosh. It's actually worse than a nuclear option. To do that would be worse than using an attack on a nuclear pickaxe meltdown. In terms of destruction, quality of life change. In terms of the escalation matter of the escalation matter, civilian matter. No way. So if you hit, you're saying if you hit power plants with any kind of missile, that's more. Well, well, just to be super clear, there's two aim points on the electric power. And this is a target set that we've, the American Air Forces have made. You designed it, yeah. So well, in order to understand why not to do it, to be, and by the way, from the moment of Tom Griffith's paper, and we did this in the mid 90s, until right now, we've not targeted electric power. So that paper for 20 years has been the piece of warning to, of the warning to all the generals in Sencom. This is what it means to target electric power. And it shows, and so what you are, what you are seeing in the plant itself, so if we could imagine, I don't see a good thing to use as a plant, but you can hit the, the cables that connect the plant to the grid, the electric power grid. That's like blowing a fuse in your home. That knocks it out for like, yeah, about a week, okay. Maybe two at most, but maybe, we're really about four or five days. But if you hit the hulls, the actual generating hulls, those are each special made, their gigantic, they're much bigger than this whole building, and it takes six months to even design them and produce them, much less bring them back in. So once you go after the hulls, so when President Trump, his red right here, is worrisome, because he's talking about, when he's talking about these massive consequences, this would be fit, this would fit with the description of going after the hulls, and you're not bringing this back with the red cross, and you're not going to come in, and you're not going to support this with a giant burlin air lift of massive water to all these people. This would be much more horrendous, and if you take out Tehran, that's 10 million people. It wouldn't be long before you took out another like 10 different nodes, and the entire 70% of the population would be without electric power. It's a much bigger problem than people realize. That is scary. That is terrifying. Gentlemen, I appreciate you all. This is, I don't know whether I'm reassured, but I'm definitely more educated, which is nice. Where should people go to check out everything that you've got going on? I'm on YouTube, and Substac, put it in the history. I'm on Substac here, or Escalation Trap, Professor Pape, and starting tomorrow, a brand new YouTube channel that's coming tomorrow afternoon, Pape on the Politics of Force. So stay tuned. And a new book. And a new book coming, our own worst enemies, America, and the age of violent populism. And my nightmare scenario was always that we'd have an election that's this contentious with an international crisis, and they're both happening. And for me, geopoliticalfutures.com is which you can visit. And I'm of the pain, you many will survive again. Is extremely probable, is my scene. Beautiful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Goodbye, my beauties. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was awesome. That was awesome, sir. Congratulations. Thanks, Chris.