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