The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1154

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Wednesday, the 30th of April, 2025. I am joined by Dan and geopolitical strategist commentator Firas Moda. welcome to the show thank you very much for having me pleasure and today we're going to be talking about the great spanish blackout

because that caught everyone on the hop, although I understand that it was probably predictable, right? A few people did. We're going to examine Trump's first 100 days and how he's got surprisingly good reviews from his enemies on this.

and what to expect in the upcoming India versus Pakistan war, quote unquote. We're legally looking forward to that one. Yes, that's definitely going to be wonderful here. Right, so, without further ado, let's... get on with it yeah so nobody expects the spanish blackout uh but it happened so uh ap is reporting this Well, everybody's reporting this massive power outage in Spain and Portugal leaves thousands stranded and millions without lights. And I'm sure you've all seen the images now.

people having to walk off trains without power, some people being stuck on trains overnight, stadiums being shut down, hospitals having to go to their emergency backup and so on. It was a complete power loss in Spain. which is surprising. Just a quick thing. I didn't actually look into this deeply because I knew you were going to cover it today. So was this all of space?

Yes, I think it was. There might have been a few splatterings of areas, but it was all of Spain, bits of Portugal, bits of France. No, because they have sensibly kept their independence. Oh, Britannia. Yes, of course. Now, you might think it's surprising because only about a week ago they managed to achieve 100% renewable power. that's incredible and then what three days later so you know everything is fixed and then and then shocker um

Yes. How did they get to 100% renewable power? Well, a lot of it was building out solar, which, you know, fair enough. Works in Spain, yeah. In Spain, so, you know, a bit of wind as well. And, of course, we play this without sound, getting terribly excited at the prospect of blowing up power. Do you want to play that, Samson? Stick it on without sound.

Yeah, power stations being demolished. This is just like the Germans. Yeah. The nuclear power plants. The soy face for thumbs up. Yay. Why is that good? The power stations are coming down because, you know, we don't need those anymore. No. Yeah, so he's very happy. The degrowth cult. And then this happened. What happened when we destroyed our power station? Yeah. Have I got longer? There we go. So basically it's about just after 12 midday, massive drop off in power.

And I've been speaking to my insiders in the power industry and they basically told me it must have been a frantic race against time because you've got certain battery reserves that you can use to restart the grid. And luckily, because eventually it went on for so long, you hit the nighttime and the nighttime demand falls off so heavily that they're able to basically get back up there. If they hadn't have been able to get it as...

restarted as quickly as they had, you would have to manually reset every substation. That's a good 12 hours without power. Well, I mean, they weren't using any because it wasn't any being supplied, but you need a base level in order to be able to restart them. Yeah, I mean, that's 12 straight hours with the entire country, zero power. Yes. That's crazy.

Yes. So, I mean, I suppose good for them that they managed to avoid a complete power loss and complete restart of the system, which could have taken days, if not weeks. So it could have been a lot worse and obviously surprising since they're 100% renewable. You would have thought this sort of thing's behind us. You should probably, I mean, if I was Spain, I'd be looking at this as a shot across the bow, right? Well, you say Spain. Not just Spain. Yeah, all of us. We've all got a net zero policy.

Which, of course, then triggered... Samson, do you want to play this without sound as well? So, you know, obviously panic buying ensues because, you know, if the power goes out for 12 hours, you might run out of toilet paper, which is not the situation you want to be in. So people rushed into the shops and they bought absolutely everything they could. I don't realise how closely connected to toilet paper my electricity in my home was.

Well, COVID as well. I guess so, yeah. Basically any sort of upset. Irrational fear of losing toilet paper. What you do is you immediately rush for the toilet paper. I don't know why. That's apparently how it works. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez yesterday said, what happened yesterday cannot ever happen again. And he vows to hold private operators to account. So just to be clear.

It's not the politician's fault for dictating that we must have 100% renewable power. It's the fault of the power companies for doing what they were told by the politician. That's the big problem here. Yes. I mean, there's a couple of points here to think about. First, renewables by their very nature are variable and not reliable. Whereas because the wind can blow too much, the clouds can shift too quickly, et cetera, et cetera. So that leads to shifts in power.

the grid insists on stability for it to keep on functioning. Yes. So there's that consideration. Oh, I'm definitely coming to that part. Yes. Yeah. The second consideration is that... Everything we have in the West is based on a just-in-time system. As in, once the system freezes, everything falls apart. Well, not just just in time, but also regularization of demand, thus the toilet paper example. Yes, exactly.

So the demand has to be very stable and predictable, and the supply has to be very stable and predictable. And that makes the system ridiculously fragile. And these are the same people who are thinking about going to war with Russia. Yes. In a system this fragile, that's very bold. And then the third factor is, if there are two or three knights without power...

The kind of looting that you will get and the kind of crime that you will get in a society that's been recently diversified, especially in a society that's become low trust. So the risks that these guys are taking are only now becoming evident? but they're too much bought into the woke cult, including the net zero aspect of the woke cult, which is just eschatology for secularists.

to actually see that there is a potential problem. And if anyone doubts the point you're making about three days without power, I was living in London during the 2012 London riots. Right. 2011 2011 2011 and i mean the the looting was off the charts by the second night let alone the third yeah and just i mean all correct obviously just out of interest uh what was france's power generation Well, France was fine. Of course it was. They've got lots of nuclear power stations. Of course they've.

Southern France had problems initially. Well, because it's linked. And actually, that's what I wanted to come on to next because this is the bit that the mainstream media does not want to talk about and therefore you're not going to get this anywhere else. I found a great explainer on grid frequency, which is something we don't talk about often. So I'm just going to have to quote bits of this to bring us up to speed so we can move on to the rest of the banter.

So everything points to the cause being a chain reaction from so-called frequency collapse. The danger of frequency collapse has been warned about for years, but politicians poisoned by the green brain virus simply refuse to listen. The cost of preventing frequency collapse has also skyrocketed across Europe.

The somewhat comical aspect of this event is the authorities' release information claiming the power collapse was due to external temperature variations to make everybody believe that climate change was caused. Now, we don't know the precise trigger, but there really is no other explanation than chain reaction through frequently collapse because there is not the resistance in the system, and I'll be coming to that in a minute.

Electricity is consumed the moment it's produced, therefore the power supply is a pull phenomenon, not a push. Consumers draw power from power plants by turning on switches and there's always been exact balance. the second most important factor is the power supply is based on alternating current like most other countries spain has a supply of 220 volts 50 hertz 50 hertz means that the current switches polarity to plus and minus 50 times a second, and I'll explain how that's done in a moment.

And this hertz rate, this frequency, must be exact. because basically all the power stations need to line up with each other and produce at the same frequency and it's basically a sine wave. They're all pumping the same energy at the same frequency into the same grid. Yes, if you've got one power point at the peak of the sine wave and the other one at the bottom... They cancel each other out. Well, it's worse than cancel each other out. Oh, do they amplify?

No, they kind of do cancel each other out, but they do it in a very destructive way. So imagine two bicycle wheels, two different bicycles, and the two bicycle wheels have been tied together with a rope. and if they're both going around at the same speed and same rotation, works beautifully. If they start going the opposite way from each other or they get out of sync, both bicycles break apart.

And that's what happened with France in that France hadn't probably had enough power to supply them to get them over the hump. But when it started losing frequency, they had to disconnect. So there would have been a French Homer Simpson somewhere sat watching this and was like, uh-oh, press the kill switch and cut them off. Because if you get these out-of-sync things...

Then he basically goes on to say that green politicians don't realise this and they've embarked on the world's largest energy experiment where every city becomes a small solar power plant, every mountain top becomes a power plant. through wind and so on now with this situation they'll describe you've got to keep this frequency in a line across different power plants that's actually bloody impressive yes if it's just a big power plant next to each city

Doing that on a national scale. And then you've got to remember that the European nations, they all link up. So not only do you need your power plants in two Spanish cities to be on the same frequency, you need the one in Germany and France and Scandinavia. They all need to be at this precise frequency.

because it's all linked up so you can see if there's a frequency drop they've got no choice but to immediately start islanding everything and cutting them off So with that, and I'll try and get through the rest of this explainer as quick as I can. Let's just watch the first minute of his video, Samson, and just refresh us on our GCSE science. What you're looking at is a very simple alternating current or AC generator, a device that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy.

This part is called the armature. It's made from metal and electricity is generated by its rotation between two magnets. To show clearly how the generator works, one half has been colored yellow. The armature can be rotated in various ways, for example using pressurised steam, as in a power plant, a flow of water from a dam, or a flow of air from a wind turbine.

These parts are called slip rings. They're also made of metal and are connected to the armature. The slip rings and the armature rotate together. The rings are connected to brushes made from carbon. The brushes make contact with the rings as the rings rotate, so they provide an electron flow within the system. In order to determine the magnitude and direction of current, a galvanometer is attached.

When the armature starts to rotate, an electric current is formed. This is because the magnetic flux changes over time. Right, so we leave that there. Yeah, so magic, right, got it. Yeah. So, I mean, the only difference I understand between that and modern power stations is that rather than using permanent magnets, as indicated here, you use superconducting magnets. So you get the spin going to build up your voltage.

and then you feed power into the superconducting magnets, and then that gives you the amperage, and you can taper that amperage up and down. So the bit about how all these power stations need to supply the right amount of power, you can feed power in and out of those magnets. once you've got your voltage up and once you've got your frequency and as you can see the

The whole thing with this is that the frequency is a natural byproduct of how the energy is generated. Because the hertz... frequency is basically just a function of how that how that spins so that spins 50 times a second as well there you go you've got your you've got you you've got your spin And it is a basic byproduct of energy generation. And as long as you get them all going at that sort of spin rate, and actually, I mean, it sounds difficult, but these things are huge.

They're very heavy and they've got a lot of momentum. They've got a lot of grid inertia going to them. So once you've got a whole bunch of these spinning, actually it's fairly, well, I wouldn't say straightforward, but it's manageable to keep them all spinning at a precise rate. So that all makes sense, right? That's alternating current. green energy doesn't use that it's direct current uses well solar is direct current

I didn't know that. Yes. I mean, I don't know anything about this, so why would I? Yeah. Wind is... Is direct current far less powerful? I think it's less efficient. I don't have the physics to explain why. I remember in GCSE physics, apparently direct current's just far weaker than all. current which is why they chose alternate it goes less of a distance and things like this over the lines um my understanding is that direct current is good for long

transmission at very high voltage or something. I don't know what I'm talking about, so don't ask me. Yeah, I can't explain that either, unless you're also a physicist. Let me mess this camera. No, I'm not. All right, well, we skip on that. But yeah, obviously solar power produces direct current. So if you've got solar panels on your roof, you need an inverter and the inverter turns it into alternator.

but it doesn't really turn it into alternating current what it does is it is it sees what the grid is producing the the frequency and it kind of mimics it but it doesn't produce its own it can only mimic it and feed it into the system So now you start to see the issue that they had in Spain is that because they were so heavily reliant on renewables and wind does produce an alternating current.

with wind yeah so so they end up it's not a stable alternating current unlike the stable alternative current that generates from convention so they often end up converting it into direct current and then inverting it back into a mimic of the frequency rate that we need here. So now you've got your problem.

Whatever happened, happened in Spain. And it might have been some weather phenomenon. It might have been a surge in demand. Maybe the Spanish discovered, because it was about the same time as our podcast went out. so maybe the spanish discovered lotus eaters and they all turned on the switch at the same time maybe it was a weather phenomenon whatever the point is is that system did not have the resilience

to whenever there was a fluctuation which normally would have been observed by massive steam turbines with the grid inertia that they have and the frequency composition that they have, when it's renewables, it's just inherently unstable. It's very, very brittle. Because they'll be generating a frequency somewhere.

Spain and then everything else is mimicking it but there's just no inertia there in order to do it which which basically gave us up on so if you've got a hundred percent renewable system but you need frequency you need the spin well what do you do how do you generate that okay the answer is is that having got rid of all the massive flywheels you then add them back in again so this is Ireland's solution to the problem they're basically just going to make massive flywheels and spin them

Using solar power and wind power, so using direct current to spin a flywheel to create the frequency, which the direct current then mimics in order to feed back into the system. if look so spinning a flywheel from coal or nuclear is bad so we've got to get rid of this we've got to get rid of the spinny thing but then we've got to add back the spinny thing except this time it's not generating any power it's being pushed along by solar power

This is the thing about the whole Ed Miliband lie that green energy is going to be cheap. You're destroying existing infrastructure that you have. which comes with a massive price. You then need to replace all of its functions in a dozen different ways. Yes. And then you need to invent completely new maintenance systems that you have no experience with. using a labor force that's less skilled, in order to achieve the same result. Naturally, this is going to be a lot more expensive.

But try telling that to Mr. Ed Miliband. And also you've just created a little spaghetti solution to what was otherwise a straightforward... Well, frequency was a natural by-product of the old way it worked. Yeah. Now it's artificially imposed. This is what I mean by how was France, because obviously nuclear power is just so much superior to all of this system. There's just no question.

carbon byproducts and actual energy output like nuclear power plants right i looked this up they're they're 95 efficient whereas solar and wind are like 30 Yeah, something like that, yeah. And it's just not even worth talking about. And the argument from safety about nuclear is so hollow, because if you can make a submarine and an aircraft carrier run on nuclear, that is about as safe as it gets.

Well, it's as safe as solar power. Yeah. So they keep on lying about these things. And I think corruption has a lot to do with it. I think one thing that we should be looking at is the extent to which politicians and parties associated with net zero zealotry are actually receiving money, like from people like nice Mr. Dale fans. who are involved in this industry and who stand to benefit from it. See, I view a lot of it as being ideology.

I view a lot of it, yeah. I mean, you described it as zealotry. I think... they have this really weird commitment to the idea that essentially man has to be dependent on this kind of power generation. or else something immoral is happening in their minds, which is why they look at nuclear power, and that is going to just destroy the entire renewables industry. Completely. Because there's just no logical reason why you would choose one over the other.

And so all they can do is fearmonger. But what about, you know, Fukushima? I do have to pull you up on that point about... nuclear being as safe as solar power. is actually safer. More people die of solar power. Back-checked in real time. And the reason more people die of solar power is because they fall off roofs. Yes, yeah, good point.

Yeah, nuclear power probably kills fewer birds as well. Yes, yes. Now, the other thing you've got to bear in mind is because the nuclear power stations in Spain, they've got a couple and they did go offline as well. And the reason they went offline is because of this frequency. They had to disconnect in order to protect the systems. And basically, every EU country, because we're all trying to get to 100% renewable, although France have decided that renewable includes...

It does. Well, it does. Yes, I agree. But everybody else has decided, no, that's not the way to go. I hate having to praise the French. I just hate to praise the French on this. Well the thing to remember is that renewables aren't renewable. In the sense that the materials that you need make the batteries, and the batteries have an expiry date, and they might explode. In Lebanon, we have a lot of issues with sort of batteries not being stored properly and possibly exploding.

So you have the issue with the safety of the batteries, you have the issue with the resources used for solar panels and for wind and for batteries not being renewable in any way. and requiring enormous mining operations that are mostly done on the backs of slaves in the Congo. Yes. Of slave labor in the Congo. And so the whole narrative that this is renewable, they aren't.

The sun is a renewable resource, but the solar panel is not. And the wind turbine dies in 20, 25 years and then has to be buried. underground somewhere. Some anthropologist in the future is going to find fields full of buried wind turbines. And ask themselves, was this a religious cult? And the answer is, yes it was. And the answer is, yes it was. Some god, yeah, 2.0. If you're watching this in a thousand years' time, no, it's genuinely a cult.

And there's another geopolitical angle to this in that every European country basically has the same energy emergency plan, which is we get it from our neighbours. Yeah, yeah. Now that works. when Russia is the last country in that chain. Yes. It doesn't work when Russia is no longer in that. They might think that, okay, France is going to be the last thing in the chain.

But France obviously had to disconnect to protect its power plants from the mismatch in the frequency. Moreover, why are we giving the French that kind of power over Europe?

Yes. The French are literally the ones saying, you're going to have to do exactly as we said, well, we cut your power. Well, they become the new Russia, don't they? Oh, exactly. Which has the whip hand. Exactly. Why do we want that? Why wouldn't we just build our own? Well, and Ed Miliband is pushing us towards it. So I spoke, so I did a Brokonomic.

Where is it? Okay. Oh, yes, also I should mention that the Spanish electric company warned in February that this is going to happen sooner or later. Oh, really? By the way, guys, the entire country is going to go black soon. Sorry. Yeah, because they could... Industry insiders, this is actually fairly obvious. I spoke to an industry insider not so long ago. I did a Brokonomics on nuclear power.

And I got in touch with that chap, and his basic message was, by the way, everything that Spain is doing, we're doing here. Of course we are. Ed Miliband is pushing us towards this. And the other thing that he said that was quite interesting that I thought was... Basically, he was emphasising how extremely lucky that we got because this was a... When you get into this sort of cascade canaps,

So obviously it ripped out all over Spain. It started to go into Portugal and France and then it got killed because it got disconnected. There's no particular reason why that wouldn't have necessarily... So if somebody was sharp on the button somewhere, there's no reason why that wouldn't have rippled out all over Europe. And then all of us could have been in the situation where we're having to spend weeks restarting manually each substation. So we could have had weeks without power.

now why is this so important because this is a live view of the uk grid at the moment um right so let's have a look so 18.1 percent We aren't generating ourself. 18%? 18%. So interconnectors there. And we're getting 7.6% from France. We're giving a bit to Ireland for whatever reason. We're taking some in from Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, and so on.

We're only generating 18% of our own... No, no, we are generating the rest of it. It's 18% is what we're... Oh, 18% from other people. Right, right, right. Yeah. We get a lot from wind for whatever reason. But look at that, only 9% from nuclear. Yeah. And what is it, 22% from gas. And biomass, is that coal? Or is that... No. That should be big pots of rain and stuff. Food products, yeah. For anyone who doesn't know, Britain has something like 185 billion tons of coal.

Yes, and we've got fracking resources and we've got the North Sea. Yeah, so we are actually a very energy-rich country. But we choose to be almost 20% dependent on other people. 9.6% nuclear. I mean, why not just do what France does, just the entire country nuclear?

It's not like we don't have safe sources of nuclear as well. Canada and Australia have loads of uranium. Let's take a look at that. Nuclear power plants. So Spain actually has seven, of course, which had to come offline because of the frequency collapse.

France has 56 ones being renewed or something like that. We've got nine and we're building two. Germany recently decommissioned their last ones. Yeah, they're down to three now. Even Russia has 37. No, I think Germany turned them off a few months ago.

Yeah, I don't have a date on this, so that's possible. Yeah, that might be good. Because I was just like, what are you doing? And the German's like, ah, we will go back to coal. Yeah, it's like, what are you doing? Idiots. What you have to remember is that there can't be prosperity without cheap food and cheap energy. There's no prosperity for anyone. There's no industry, there's no manufacturing, there's no economic success of any sort. without cheap food and cheap energy.

And this country can very easily feed itself and others and provide power for itself and others. But there are political choices that are being made that go completely against that. because of strange ideological reasons that are best explained as a form of cult, having taken over the decision makers' minds. Completely true. Can we get back to that map? Sorry, just a second. It blows my mind how France is the one country in Europe that basically escaped the cult.

And I think it comes back to sort of like the sort of futurist mindset of the French Revolution. Like we're going to build like the, you know, the beautiful futuristic. you know, high-tech country of tomorrow. And the French took it seriously. I mean, don't go wrong, they've done a lot of things wrong. But, like, on this, They're so obviously correct and it's driving me crazy.

that we're genuinely worried about our power supplies. It was also a geopolitical choice for the French. They wanted to make sure that they weren't reliant on anybody, be it the Gulf and the possibility of an energy embargo from the Gulf. Be it the Russians, be it the Americans. This is why the French have a fully independent military supply chain. They make sure that their food production...

is fully self-sufficient and they have energy self-sufficiency. This is what allows you to actually be a serious geopolitical player. Yes, it is. In many respects, France is already at the position that Trump is trying to take the US to. Yes. The US has all of the ingredients to be there. It's chosen not to. But in many ways, it's chosen not to. We could do exactly the same thing. I looked it up the other day. It's only something like a dozen power plants to power every house in Britain.

you know it's like okay so let's build like you know 15 or something make sure we've got a lot of excess a lot of slack in the system whatever it is and it costs them like 130 billion okay that's a lot of money you only need to spend that once and then you've got whatever the maintenance

as opposed to destroying the infrastructure that you already have to replace it with less reliable infrastructure, which you're going to have to replace anyway. Yeah, we're spending all that money on the renewable boondoggle. So that was the one thing that I didn't come to that I think I should throw in there. If you were going to design this system from scratch for renewables, you would design the system to be DC rather than AC. Right. So what does that involve?

Every oven, every washing machine, every TV, every computer, every air conditioning, all of it, you need to throw it all out and buy new appliances. So either... Put the Green New Deal down. Yep. So either we carry on with this Green Revolution... And we have to either massively increase the cost. If you're going to do renewables, you need 100% redundancy.

You're going to need massive amounts of batteries and batteries don't need to be... like physical batteries they can be they can be pulleys and mine shafts you winch them up when you've got excess power and you let them go down or you can have a two-stage lake and gravity pump there's a whole bunch but you need massive redundancy if you're going to do the renewable thing and you don't have the grid inertia, so you've got a fragile grid that can collapse at any time.

or you need to build huge spinning flywheels in order to give you back the inertia that you've just taken away. So you need to either massively over-engineer the system, or you need to throw away every appliance in your country and start again. I'd rather build new. Maybe a giant treadmill around London with an old run on and sort of try to make that into a flywheel. The Japanese actually have something like that. They've got roads where there's a little indent.

So when you step on it, it generates a very tiny amount of power. We ought to put those in our immigration centres. I guess we've got no choice. I'll just mention that you've covered this in your blog as well. Not in as much detail as we have now, but yes. Yes, but that is there and available. I don't think we've got time to get into that now because we've got to hear about...

Trump. Yeah. So that was very interesting. I didn't know any of that. Yeah, it was good, wasn't it? Yeah. Definitely. Matt says, how will mainland Europe handle war mobilization under net zero policy? Well, that's the question, actually. Do you know what's really interesting? You can have a Flintstones tank. Yes. I think they're going to have to. Because the thing is, though, if you look at what Europe is actually doing,

They are acting as if we're living in the Star Trek future already. So, right, we've got one world government, we've got the United Federation of Planets, and so everything, there's no possibility of war on Earth, and therefore we'll plan... for all of this sort of stuff. It's like, yeah, but that's not the world we're living in. What is wrong with you? And he says there, how much coal will they have to buy from Japan? Well, a lot, apparently.

Because for some reason we're refusing to sell anyone any coal. I don't know what's wrong with us. But anyway, yeah, it's preposterous. Absolutely preposterous. So, we have just passed Donald Trump's first 100 days. And there have been lots of write-ups about this, and I could have chosen one of many, but Politico had a surprisingly positive write-up.

Now, you can see from the title there, like, well, he's failed to immediately end the war in Ukraine or bring down food prices or conduct mass deportations. That was a bit of a sort of maybe. But overall, when they posted this on Twitter, they were like, hmm.

He's done most of what he said he was going to do, actually, and it's only been 100 days. And so I have my criticisms of what Trump has done, which we'll come to at the end, but generally it's been pretty good. So they say, I'll just read a bit of this.

Going in. During his comeback campaign, Trump made sweeping promises centered on America First policy. A crackdown on immigration, a hoover haul of the federal government, a drop in grocery prices, global tariffs, the end of wars, and the elimination of DEI programs, among others.

In many cases, Trump has kept the promises he ran on. But to do so, he has tested the balance of power, pushing up against Congress, the courts, and other guardrails. Doing so could hamper his ability to make the changes permanent or meaningfully enact them at all. So, that's interesting. They have to concede...

Yeah, he's actually doing what you voted for. And so a lot of people who support MAGA are like, yeah, I voted for this whenever something happens and the liberal media is outraged. They're like, yeah, but this is what I wanted. And so, yeah, so I get to enviously look over at America and say, I'm glad you're getting what you... I just ran the numbers. 100 days is 7% of his term. Yeah. It's meaningful, but... Yeah. I mean, he's... Well, it's...

it indicates what the rest of his term is going to be like. Yes. If he has a fairly... Well, that's good. Yeah, I know. He's had quite a productive one. So this is a very long article. I'm just going to pull out the... So you've got some that are broken. You've got some that are to be determined. because they are long-term things. But I'll just read out the ones that he's kept, according to them. It's quite a lot.

Blanket tariff of up to 20% on imported goods, at least 60% tariff on Chinese goods. Yes, he has done that. Whether it's a good idea or not is a different question. Ban transgender athletes from participating in women and girls sport. End the federal government's crackdown on cryptocurrency firms and investors. Pardon people convicted for their participation in the January 6th riot. Interesting how they describe it as a riot. All of a sudden. Yeah.

And actually, if he came in and did nothing more than just pardon the Jan Sixers, I probably would have been... Fairly happy with that. But no, it's just a riot now. It's not an insurrection. According to, again, Politico. Oh, right. Yeah. Instruct federal agencies to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age. which he's done. However, two federal judges have blocked the order, and there's currently a legal battle going on over that. Another two in jail, so...

Just as a quick aside, I saw so many people, they're locking up judges now. And I managed to ratio some guy by saying, today you learned that judges can commit crime. Yes, judges can go to jail if they do something wrong. I mean, this is crazy. They've spent the last four years trying to put Trump in jail. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. I mean, they put Bannon in jail. They put Roger Stone in jail.

yeah like sorry if your judges make break laws they go to jail too but anyway moving on so rehire service members who are discharged due to their refusal to take the code vaccine again these are things that trump has actually done uh eliminate di from the military

and launch a task force to remove woke generals, which is great. Again, if you're an American, this is all stuff that It's so easy for him to sort of knock down, you know, sorry, you go and do that, you go and do that, you go and do that.

Politico's saying, well, yeah, he's done a bunch of all this. Restore the name of Fort Bragg, which I didn't know had been renamed, but probably less important. Sign an executive order to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants born in the US. He did that, did he? Yeah. This is a particularly fascinating thing for people from the old world, right? Because in the old world, it's almost all blood.

You get your citizenship by your parents. So even if I was born in China or something, I'd be a British citizen because my parents are British citizens and vice versa. So the New World's obsession with birthright citizenship is weird. It's very much an Americanization and an example of how the entire world is a province of the American empire, at least intellectually. Completely. The American ideology is essentially one world war, the Cold War, after the collapse of the Soviet ideology.

And that's all we've had left to stew in, unfortunately. So anyway, they agree that he has sealed the border and stopped the invasion, and the border crossing encounters bear that out. He's declared a national emergency and used the military for mass deportations, and he has deported something like 140,000. Now, a lot of people are like, well, that's not nearly enough.

But the Biden administration was claiming that they were deploying twice as many, but they were counting border turnaways in those numbers, which doubled the numbers. Well, if you count it like that, his numbers are through the roof then. Exactly, because it's literally millions. came in under Biden. So Trump has, he has secured the border. And even Politico concedes. He's declared a national emergency to approve new drilling, pipelines, refineries, power plants and reactors.

Biden shut all this down by executive order. So he has done that and they concede. He has terminate, they've got a little quote from him here, quote, terminate these Green New Deal atrocities on day one, which he has done. So they're not going to have the kind of power out which Spain had, I imagine. Again, just except in California. Well, that's their problem. He's upended the Federal Civil Service, which is great.

He's repealed Biden's artificial intelligence executive order on day one, which he did, which shifts the executive branch's focus from protecting safety and civil rights to ensuring American market dominance in and out. Which, in such an emergent field, is probably not the time to be conservative about it. No. Yes. You've got to get ahead. Especially since the Chinese have demonstrated with DeepSeek what they can do. Exactly. They can't.

talk about Tiananmen Square in deep swing so there is yes it's like yeah but yeah and so the majority of things they've got on the list are to be determined I'm just going to leave them out. So in his first 100 days, what he has done, he's got three that he has broken. So he hasn't ended the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. To be fair, that was a bit of an overpromise anyway. But it's not like he's not trying to end.

The way I look at it is that it's spiritually over. Everybody knows that Zelensky doesn't have, you know, the US does not have Zelensky's back anymore. And he's not retaking the territory that he's lost to Russia. uh implement mass deportations of undocumented immigrants on day one i i don't know i think he looks like he's doing

I mean 140,000 would average to maybe 50k a month or something like that. That's quite a lot under 50k a month. That's a significant number but given the numbers of people that have entered it's a problem. But it sort of confirms the point that the border needed to be closed to sort of stop these numbers rising until complete overwhelming of the native population. there's the what you find what i find with the media is that they're completely

firm in their belief that they're absolutely neutral. And anybody who looks at them can say, guys, please, you're not. And if you say that to them, you are attacking the fourth estate and undermining democracy. So it's impressive that Politico was able to put together something somewhat coherent and somewhat fair. And it shows that actually what's been delivered is probably more than what they're willing to admit.

Yeah. No, no, that was the reason that I used that. I was like, well, you know, it's quite comprehensive. And surprisingly charitable. So it was very interesting. And the final one is that he said he was going to immediately bring prices down starting on day one. And of course, that's actually not really in the president's control. All he can do is liberalize the bar. To be fair, he's brought down energy prices. He has. And the... He was referring to growth.

But one follows from the other. And there's a lag. And the other part is that if he does make a deal with the Russians and with the Iranians, a lot of the geopolitical premium on the price of oil goes down. And so you end up with a more stable, lower oil price. There's a discussion over whether or not this is good for American shale or not. That's a separate conversation. But it does mean that...

You know, cheap energy, key to prosperity. And we just recorded a Brokernomics going out next Tuesday where we discussed the Iranian and Russian strategy. So viewers can look forward to that next week. But no, you're absolutely correct. I mean, it's slightly unfair to say that he'd say bring prices down on day one. I mean, he's begun the process of bringing prices. Yes. But again, it's not even in direct control. It's three or four steps down the line.

So anyway, I'm genuinely quite impressed with what Trump has done so far. And the issue is that a lot of these things are real tangible goods. Yes. And they are being overshadowed by... So I wanted to make sure that we had a fair analysis of what he did. The Washington Times has got a really, really comprehensive... article about Trump and how he shut the border and Tom Homan.

Oh, I love that guy. Oh, I love him. He's so good. He's just absolutely merciless. We can be deported together. Yeah, exactly. But he makes a good point. Never again does this country have to have a debate about this. It was simple because they didn't... they didn't need new legislation, they didn't need to change anything structurally about the system.

It was just willpower. It was just enforcing the laws that were already... It's all political will all the way down. It's all political will. And so if ever the border is left open like that in future, this has been a concrete proof. But it's the will of the administration and not anything to do with something extraneous. And here in Britain, it's the will of Keir Starmer to keep the boats coming in. This is not a subject of debate. It can be shut down. It can be stopped.

We still have a Navy. It's self-evident. We could absolutely do this. But anyway, so the tariffs. So the tariffs. This has been one thing that's got everyone spooked. And Trump, honestly, I think, went about this in the wrong way and did all of this back to... Because he began by saying, in fact, he began by, in my opinion, delivering Canada to the globe.

with his talk of making it the 50th. He was a little bit uncautious on his rhetoric towards Canada, I'll give you that. On the tariff thing, I would push back for... 20, 30 years now, they've been trying to use a scalpel on the trade policy, and it has failed consistently. So he had to bring a hammer to this discussion. I understand, but the thing I think he should have done... is spent the first month or two buttering up his outfit.

To be fair, yeah. He could have done that. He should have been promising them, you know, we're going to help together. You know, America is going to work with... pierre polliver or you know marina penn or whoever to make canada france germany wherever great again we're going to have brilliant networks of communications and trade and uh in the technological exchanges whatever it is he's going to promise whatever they want

get them all on the hook and make sure they're all like sign a bunch of deals. And then after they've signed all the deals, you say, right, China. guess how high your tariffs going because then everyone's kind of already bought into what you're doing and they have possibly i'm a little bit cautious because administrations like i say 2030s have been trying and approach

and they've never got anywhere. They've generally given away the goodies and then find that nothing comes back. So a lot of the reason we're having a problem with China is because they were brought into the World Trade Organization, the WTO.

And it was assumed that, you know, you start with your sort of bridge building efforts and then you kind of get everything else that comes with it. And a particular exacerbating factor with the Chinese relationship is they were brought in as a developing nation status.

which basically allows them to do a whole bunch of things, which we now think of as unfair trade practices. So they can do tariffs, but the US hadn't been able to. And I'm not saying don't do the tariffs. What I'm saying is essentially... message is better carrot first then stick rather than stick first then carrot so even though i do admire his use of the hammer you don't want to make everything hammers no and but also you

You need to show some love before you bring out the hammer. Let me suggest a counterfactual, just for consideration. If Trump had said nice things, The entirety of European media, the BBC, et cetera, et cetera, would have spun it in a particular way to say he's selling us chlorinated chicken and he's trying to destroy our trade and this isn't. this isn't going to work. So there's an element of

The Europeans have not shown any goodwill towards their own people first and towards the Americans. That would have justified a nicer approach. So perhaps there's something to think about in the next six months where essentially the backing of Ukraine stops completely. The Russians improve their position significantly. The Baltics are under threat. And then the Europeans have to come back running with their tails between their legs.

Absolutely. I'm not saying there can't be a 4D chess move. Yes. And I'm not sure if it is 4D chess or if it is just a sort of, you know, this is how this train is going to go regardless. But I'm also...

I accept what you're saying, and it's a fair point. I'm just not convinced that the ideologues in charge of Europe would have done it better. But you are right to say... that messaging it better to the European people And working on softening up the European publics would have been a smarter 40 chess move rather than... hammers all the way down. I mean, I don't think that JD Vance meant to make European politicians literally cry.

I don't think that... To be fair, European politicians should not be such bloody wusses. I agree. No, no, no. I totally agree. But that's you not taking them as they are and taking them as they ought to be. And the thing is, I think that the Trump administration is kind of... they've put a bit of a step wrong in that thinking that they're going to share american moral priors when in fact they don't they're a bunch of blubbing girls

This is why I like Conan the Barbarian over Mark Rubio. I agree, but the problem is Trump has had to step down. uh his tariffs right so trump has uh had to release the grip on a bunch of components that u.s car makers But then this, instead of looking like strength, it looks like weakness. Yes. And much of diplomacy, as I'm sure you're going to... Perception. Yeah, it's perception. Absolutely. 100%. And so power is what people perceive you to have, 90%.

and then the other 10% is what you can actually do it's a tricky one because what he's got to do is he's got to send the message he's basically got to explain to people

you don't want to be basing your supply chain on China. So he needs to send a very clear message out for that. But at the same time, if you just bring it in in one fell swoop, then you are going to disrupt supply chain so we need to send the message but also then have a whole bunch of exemptions and tear them down here and stuff like that and at the same time he's also got to respond to the chinese who increased

things on him so he's got to he's got to play the strongman routine and then they've got to dial it back between each other to something that's sensible yes and not getting their backs up by telling them you're going to annex their countries or making them cry in public It's probably a good start to that. Because if I see a German politician crying, I just want to bully him more. Yeah, I like it. I'm not saying I don't enjoy it. That when the Ukraine war started,

the head of the German army posts on his own social media saying that I never expected to ever see a war in Europe again. And I thought, hold on a second. If you're the chief of staff of the freaking army, what are you doing? What does he spend his days doing? Do you think this is the Peace Corps? Do you think this is some kind of NGO? Do you not understand what your job is? So there's a degree to which...

European leaders are so far gone that we have no idea how to reason with them other than punch them in the face. And I agree. There's a separate point that I would want to introduce perhaps for your consideration. Put yourself in the shoes of the CEO of a car company. If you know that this tariff war is happening and there is going to be this madness, and if you know that Trump has the upper hand over Europe and Japan and Korea in terms of defense,

You are wiser investing in the United States because you think that over a long enough time period, the Americans will win the trade war and impose their will. And this is the biggest and richest market, so you might as well base yourself there. benefits Trump, not necessarily out of 4D chess, but out of the sheer size of the gorilla that is the American economy. The only thing that springs to mind on that is that during the Brexit negotiation,

I remember, I think it was Merkel, went to the leaders of the German car manufacturers and said, look, you're just going to have to take this on the chin. Yeah. Because this is going to massively impact your business. And they said, okay, it's our patriotic duty.

take it on the chin which was surprising frankly yes you think cynical multinational corporations but actually they all fell into line and did exactly as they were told and didn't give britain an inch in these negotiations which they could have done we you know they could have And the fact that they're not screaming bloody murder about Russian energy and about green energy.

shows you that the entire establishment has been intellectually captured, spiritually captured by this woke dogma. And when you're dealing with cultists, It's difficult to understand what the reasonable approach is. As in, there's a reason why organized religion doesn't tolerate cultists. and doesn't tolerate heretics. Because when they go down that route, their capacity to reason gets eroded. So just a point on that. I think that the issue was that...

Trump and Vance are coming from a very classically liberal American perspective. Yes. they could have framed things differently, or at least have Vance do it after all of this had been kind of embedded into the consciousnesses. of people rather than go over and basically tell, because I mean, you saw lots of posts, lots of articles written by them going, oh, the international order is over. The sky has fallen. It's all come to an end. And it's like, well, yes.

But really, the Trump administration kind of didn't want them to think that initially. They did need to send a clear message that there has been a regime change. I mean, I don't know if you'd agree with this, but I think the days of... soft power have ended in the days of hard power are resumed. I agree. And there needs to be such a clear message to the world, no, the order has changed.

And actually, one of the few things I can say to Keir Starmer's credit is he understood that the music had changed immediately. Yes. And he got it. It's the European leaders. It's the EU leaders who are struggling with the fact that the mood music is now different. I won't belabor the point. But the thing is, even Trump's tariffs are having an effect. So apparently China's factory activity is slipping, according to Reuters. Again, I won't go into any great detail, but so...

It's easy to look at the stock markets and go, oh, God, look at the panic. It happens. It has a long-term effect. It has an effect of time. he probably will start getting something of the result he's looking for. Well, this is your point about the uncertainty. The uncertainty is a feature, not a bug of this policy. Because if there is uncertainty, it's like, okay, I need certainty. What's the most certain thing?

Based in America. Yeah. Yeah. Beyond the guerrilla's good side. Exactly. But yeah, so overall, Trump hasn't done terribly. He does seem to have... tried to do what people voted for him to do. And it's an auspicious 100 days. I'm very happy with it. Yeah, me too. I'm quite happy with it.

As Nori in the chat points out, though, the first 100 days only reflects the rest of his term if they don't lose the MIB terms. Yeah, but that's November 2026. But that sort of brings us up to the argument about tariffs and the need of a blunt instrument. The problem that the American political system has is that it must vote every two years, and your ability to execute changes fundamentally every two years.

Therefore, there is an argument to be made that you should maximize the pain economically of whatever it is that you're going to do. in the earliest period possible so that by the time you hit that midterm timeline, you have made some gains and you've recovered to some extent so that you can continue with the rest of your agenda. This system, being at risk of shifting strategies completely every two years messes up the ability to plan and execute properly

and it destroys the capacity for finesse. And it leaves a strategic disadvantage to China and Russia who can plan decades. Exactly. So if you're engaged in this kind of great power competition, you can't have these constant shifts in direction, but it's a feature of the system. No, I agree. Matt makes some good points as well. Trump approaching allies and addressing trade policies in the first administration made that the carrot, which is actually a good point.

And he says during the Biden administration China was laundering goods through third countries to bypass US tariffs That's true And I wasn't in any way against him putting tariffs on Vietnam or wherever else he put them because yeah, of course you But anyway, right, let's move on. So the upcoming India-Pakistan war, what do we make of this? Samson, if you want to bring up the links. Oh, there we go. We've got the links here. Right, excellent. So we have with us today a geopolitical analyst.

So what I've got here is I've got your blog looking at the war risk. I've also got a map because actually a lot of this can be basically started from just understanding the terrain, especially the water issue. And we've also thrown in a video of Indians and Pakistanis dancing at each other along the borderline if we run out of things to talk about. So, yeah, where do you want to start? What's the...

Should we dig into the map? Yeah. Address the water issue? Let's start with the water. Let's start with the water because this is what defines everything else. Yeah. You had the partition of India, Pakistan along religious lines. And there was a fight over who controls Kashmir because most of the water that flows into both countries starts in Kashmir. So let me get this right. So basically, this is the Tibet Plateau, very high region, 4,000 or 5,000 feet up, lots of glacial water there.

Water evaporates from the Indian Ocean and the Indian land, basically travels north, hits the high terrain, comes down, and then it basically flows back. And the situation you've got is Pakistan here. 92% of their water is going to come through. Indian territory on its way to Pakistan. Exactly. Exactly. As I understand it, there was six tributaries in Kashmir. Yes. Three were annexed to Pakistan, three to India in a treaty.

like 1960 or something. There's a water sharing treaty, the Indus River Water Treaty, which divides the water between the two sides. And one of the reactions of India to the terrorist attack that happened on 22 April was that they suspended that treaty. They can't instantly shut down the water. It requires building big chunks of infrastructure from canals to dam to power stations to what have you. But they're saying that this is something that they're willing to consider.

Now for Pakistan, that's the Indus Valley, the bit in green that you see in Pakistan. And 40% of Pakistani labor and 20% of Pakistani GDP. comes from this agricultural output that mainly comes from the Indus River. And Indus is the reason India is named India. So it's a bit unfair that the Indus River... is actually in the hands of India's mortal enemy, Pakistan. I think it's worth pointing out that the Indus River is an ancient and famous river. It's kind of like the Nile. Exactly.

I mean, you can see, in fact, the desert on either side. And it's very much the same sort of situation as in Egypt. Egypt, I guess, is lucky to have its sources thousands of miles away. They're having a problem with Ethiopia over their water sources. But this is an existential risk to Pakistan. If that water begins to be diverted... it becomes quickly an existential issue.

My understanding with that treaty is that it's something like a third of the water goes to India and two thirds goes to Pakistan. A lot of that water naturally wants to flow into that valley anyway. And my understanding is that India is currently only using about 90% of its share. because in order to get up to 100% of its third,

It basically needs to build out dams. But as you can imagine, this region is quite mountainous and they haven't... It's complicated engineering. It's very complicated engineering. It's not clear that the Indians themselves can do it. and build this kind of infrastructure, they are saying that they can do it. But this is pretty much where the front line is. And if you look at cities like Islamabad and Lahore, They are right next to the border. So the capital of Pakistan is very close to Kashmir.

And Lahore is in Punjab or next to the Indian side of Punjab, which means that two of Pakistan's three most important cities, the third being Karachi, are ridiculously vulnerable from a military perspective. And what is the terrain like to cross that border? So for Kashmir, this is a ridiculously mountainous terrain. The three wars that they fought in... 48 65 and 71 led to this border and the 65 and 71 war really didn't lead to major changes on the border because

the nature of the terrain. It's very difficult to advance and move in mountains. So does the border look like that because that's where the front line was when they stopped fighting? In Ramo and Kashmir, it looks like that because that's where the ceasefire, that's where they were when the ceasefire happened. And so they sort of froze that into the line of control. And that line of control is the

de facto border with both of them saying that this is the border, but we don't relinquish our claims in any way. And we're going to try to arbitrate this in another way. So you can see why. Kashmir is such a disputed region. The water comes in the mountains, it flows through there. It's existential. So the control of Kashmir absolutely is crucial for both sides. Yes, even more so for Pakistan, and they're not the ones who are in control of it.

So is this a natural border of some sort? No, no, no. This is the result of ethnic cleansing, and this is where it sort of ended up. Yeah, but what I mean is, is there any kind of... Between Ukraine and Russia, there's no natural frontier, right? Yeah. So is there a natural frontier at all here? There are rivers, but it's not exactly a natural frontier. So it's relatively easy to cross. It's on this flat land. For Lahore specifically, the Pakistanis are extremely vulnerable.

And you have to remember, India has 250 million Muslims. Pakistan hardly has any Hindus. They allow Sikhs to enter. Why do they have hardly any Hindus? Because Islam tends to be a lot less tolerant than any of the others. So the Indians have their Muslim population. Don't get me wrong, they both ethnically cleansed each other or religiously cleansed each other.

There was absolutely no mercy there from either side. But the Indians did still end up with a massive Muslim population. The Pakistanis did not. and how they treat the Christians in Pakistan and so on, Islam tends to be militant and severe when it has the upper hand. Pakistanism. In the Ottoman Caliphate, it wasn't exactly like that. They had big Christian communities, big Jewish communities. I think it's worth pointing out that Pakistan is basically an Islamist state as well. Yes.

People think that the Arabs are Muslims and therefore they must have a very overtly Muslim consciousness when they're governing, but actually the Arabs seem to be a lot more moderate with their application of Islam. Whereas the Pakistanis, whenever you see any state organ talking about Islam, they talk about it as if they're just fresh converts. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. I mean, even in the Gulf, which is the place where...

Islamic law is most overtly applied, at least in theory with the exception of places like the UAE, the Pakistanis are seen as ridiculous extremists. And for Pakistan... Imagine the Saudis being like, yeah, those Pakistanis are crazy. So there are funny stories there. When Pakistanis from the United Kingdom go on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia... Sometimes they'll try to do things like pray in a public space that isn't a mall. and they'll suddenly find the Saudi police beating them.

We've got so much to learn. Whereas here, if it happens in, say, France or in Britain, sort of everybody backs away. It's a show of force. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the Saudis don't tolerate the kind of disruptiveness that comes with European Islam. And European Islam, as the UAE has been warning, has become much more extreme than Islam in the Middle East in a lot of places.

Now, mind you, when Pew surveys did a survey on what the Muslims believe in the Middle East and so on, and they only did it once. because the results of that survey in 2013 were pretty catastrophic. 67% of Palestinians, 60-something percent of Egyptians. And in Pakistan and Afghanistan, 90% and 90-something percent supporting Sharia law.

was really high. 19 was evident that we were incompatible. Yes, there's a conflict. But to your point about the borders, I'm not seeing anything on here that suggests that these borders could not change. No, and this is the biggest fear of the Pakistani state. This is the biggest fear of the Pakistani state. that basically India, because it has a much bigger population and a bigger economy and spends a lot more on its military, could one day come and invade. And so the Pakistani doctrine is...

If the Indians capture enough territory in pakistan we the pakistanis will nuke our own territory with tactical weapons to destroy the indian army can i recommend that they make an immediate push to lahore I wouldn't cheer nuclear war. And the Indian position is that if you use tactical nukes against Indian forces, even in Pakistani territory, we will use strategic nukes against your cities. And the Pakistanis also have strategic nukes. I want to raise the point on that, sorry, because I...

I looked this up the other day, so when it first all flared up, I was like, okay, what's going on? And I found out that the Pakistanis haven't had a missile test or a nuclear test since 1998. Right. So I'm mildly skeptical of their technical ability in this regard. Yeah, I mean, they have Chinese support for their military. The nukes, we've heard back in the day that they're under American control and American supervision. And that's the only way that sort of it's tolerable.

Once you've figured out the process for building a strategic weapon, building a tactical weapon is not that hard. Sure, but my question is, if they haven't in over a generation even tested... things yes I mean like didn't the last Trident test fail yes and so and that's Britain first world country best universities in the world Pakistan

Not first world country, possibly not the best universities in the world. The only institution in the Pakistani state is the Pakistani military. The judiciary to a lesser extent, and then there's chaos. So if anybody is going to do things well in Pakistan, it's going to be the Pakistani military. Is there any indication that... things could happen imminently. Yes, so Pakistan this morning, the information minister of Pakistan this morning said that

Their intelligence is that the Indians are going to conduct some kind of strike against Pakistan in the next 24 to 36 hours. This was around eight hours ago now. So that 24 hours is ticking down quite quickly. It's ticking down quite quickly. And in 2019, when there was a terrorist incident targeting the Indians also, backed by Pakistan or allegedly backed by Pakistan, pick your side.

The Indians did conduct an airstrike. They say it was against the training camp, the Pakistanis and some... A satellite imagery analysis says it was against a hill. This resulted in a Pakistani airstrike and then a dogfight and the Indians lost one of their jets and one of the pilots. Okay, so this is a lively border. Yes, I understand over the last year there's been 1,500 ceasefire breakdowns.

There are always incidents, but there's a difference between shooting randomly across the border and nobody gets hurt. and between using jets to bomb camps. Yes, that's a big one. So the Pakistani defense minister has said he thinks the Indians are going to do something in 24, 48 hours. Have the Indians said anything? No, no. They haven't confirmed it.

They've been making pretty blood-curdling threats about what they will do to the people who are responsible and how they will chase them to the ends of the earth and blah, blah, blah. A lot of it, the way that politics works in these two somewhat democratic countries is that you have to keep the population riled up. because you're not delivering enough on a lot of domestic things. And so when a foreign opportunity comes up, you have to do it. And they have excess manpower.

And they both think that they have the upper hand militarily. it's me they've been buying a lot of modern equipment and getting a lot of stuff from the chinese yeah and again the pakistani military With a lot of these countries, especially with these Muslim countries like Egypt and Pakistan and Turkey before Erdogan, the military is the only point of national pride.

And so you must convince the public that the military is unassailable and that it is competent and capable and therefore entitled to play the role that it does play in politics and economics. so my my only i mean i i no doubt they think that but their militaries are terrible

Yes. I mean, Muslim militaries generally, right? The jihadi movements tend to perform better than the Muslim militaries. And now Turkey is changing that. Yeah. And now Turkey is changing that to sort of... make its army more ideological and therefore more committed. What a great tone of affairs. People fight for God and country. I agree. This is why when the Europeans say they're going to fight Russia and they discard nationalism and discard religion.

you have to sort of laugh at them a little bit. Are you sure you're not going to fight for the abstract doctrine of human rights? Yeah, exactly. Well, this, I think, is an interesting one, just a quick thing. Because many of the countries in the Middle East are essentially fictional, right? Lines drawn on maps by colonial powers. And so, like, you know, Iraq...

Syria. So the border is fictional. Yeah. But something like Basra being a political community. Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. What would have been more sensible, I think, would be the European powers creating a series of small ethnic states. that would actually have functioned as sort of national. That would have required a level of bloodletting comparable to 1923 Turkey, Greece. But the point is, if your country is essentially kind of fixed...

Yes. Then you only have, you can't really fight for national. It feels a bit artificial. Saddam's nationalism always felt very... forced yeah forced yeah which is why when he was in trouble he turned islamist yes uh but the the religion is authentic yes you can see yes yes uh so yeah i could i mean you i would have thought in the case of turkey actually they would have had a fairly authentic now

They do, and the Turkish military is quite good, but it's completely untested in battle since the First World War. The Turks haven't fought anybody except Cyprus, which wasn't much of a challenge. so interesting interesting oh let me just double click on the motives because My macro view of this is look, populations in both countries are growing. Their water demands are growing in both countries.

There was a terrorist attack in the Kashmir region, yes, and India immediately responded by going to water. I can't help but think that India was like, okay, the first opportunity we get, we're going to bring this water issue up. I think so. Terrorism attack happened, and it's like, right. That's it. That's our moment. They threatened to do it in 2019, but they didn't do it. Now they've said that they've abrogated the treaty and they're ignoring it.

And the Pakistanis said that they're going to abrogate the treaty that governs the line of control, meaning that there is not a real ceasefire. It's a ceasefire in practice, but there's no legal reason for them to be in a ceasefire. So they're edging closer to this and the problem is that the level of national pride that they have, both countries, is completely out of whack with their actual capabilities. disproportionate to what they deserve to have as well.

That's a very true point. As we get to the series, Samson, do you want to play the video with no sound in the background so we can see these guys in action? So just while these champs are dancing off against each other... So do we think they're actually likely to go to a hot war? I think that the Indians are honour-bound to do something and that it will last for a couple of days up to a week and that it will calm down.

So what is something? As in an airstrike in Pakistan and then the Pakistanis retaliate. Some limited exchange that remains managed. Something to save face. Something to save face. Because I think that they both know that if they got into a hot war, an extended war, it would immediately become a China-US proxy conflict. with the West backing India and China backing Pakistan, solidifying Huntington's idea of an Islamic-Chinese alliance against the West, which is what we're seeing in a lot of ways.

And they don't necessarily want this kind of conflict. But the problem is that... For the Indians, they don't have, I mean, this is a border region. Unless they get massively humiliated, they're willing to take risks. In 2019, the loss of the jet really embarrassed them and made the Pakistanis very pleased with themselves.

What happened there? They had an airstrike from India into Pakistan, Pakistan doing an airstrike in India. There was a dogfight between their jets and the Indians lost a MiG-21. And they just lost one jet, so it's a very acceptable loss, etc. But the Pakistanis felt that they saved face and that they came out on top in that exchange. They got the brang right. The problem is that so much of this is based on bragging rights and that...

Islam's view of Hinduism, and I would argue a negative view of Hinduism is quite warranted, is so negative that It does warrant escalation, exactly. And the Hindu's view of Islam and of the risks associated with Pakistan is very extreme as well. I mean, you get mobs that are led by members of the ruling party burning mosques and attacking Muslims randomly. You get people killed because they are suspected of having slaughtered a cow.

And then in Pakistan, you get something very similar. In Pakistan, you get something extremely similar. Somebody supposedly blasphemed. Yes, created a Quran or something. And it goes completely insane. So there's... Making such countries into democracies is itself quite dangerous because it leads to the kind of pandering and pride that allows things to get out of control.

it would have been better to have a sultan yes it genuinely would no no absolutely like some sort of rajashtani king we don't respect how culturally contingent democracy is and how necessary it is to sort of think carefully about who you want to have a say. But your base case is a limited border skirmish. That's the most probable outcome. What's the next most probable outcome?

If they don't know how to manage it over two or three months, we're in very dangerous territory. If it goes into two or three months and then ends with both sides being bloodied but having some bragging rights.

that would be the next most likely outcome. Is there a possibility of like a prolonged three-year Russia-Ukraine style ongoing conflict? Or maybe a sort of Iran-Iraq war. Yes, but I would suggest that that's the... I hope that that's the least likely outcome because I'm basing this on the two sets of political leaders thinking that they have too much to lose from that.

The point that I make sometimes to my clients is that betting on political leaders being rational in the way that we think is not always a safe bet. Especially when you're in this region of the world. Especially when you're in this region of the world, that is a fundamentally irrational region.

So what is the rational thing for the Pakistanis to do? Is it to make a show? So it would be for the Indians to do their strike and then the Pakistanis do their strike. And then we listened to China and the United States and they both told us to de-escalate. But what if China says, go for it, we're going to support you all the way? Would they have a motivation to do that, Chinese? Well, they might if someone's just slapped gargantuan tariffs on them. They have...

The two great powers other than the United States have an interest. in escalating conflicts that draw American resources, because it means that they are less involved in their own near abroad. So Russia has an interest in escalation in Yemen or in Iran up to a point. because it means that the Americans have to focus there. China has an interest in escalation in Iran or in India-Pakistan because it means that the Americans have less resources to direct towards them.

but always up to a point. As in, mature players in geopolitics understand that there are no geopolitical solutions. that the geopolitics game is constantly being played, and it never ends. But the US also has the defense industry that just likes continuous war. That's also true. That's also true. But I think that they have their hands full with China.

and with Ukraine, and with the Middle East. I think there's got to be a sense underpinning all of this that, I mean, it could very quickly turn into millions. Yes. Very, very quickly and probably quite easily. Yes. And does that actually benefit anyone? Is the status quo better than that eventually? Framing it in terms of better implies that the most rational course of action will be pursued that's true

Yes, it does. I don't know why I did it. And I just don't agree with that assumption. I agree. That's one of the reasons I became religious, because that's just not a correct assumption. But they've got to have a kind of fear in the back of their minds, like, oh, we could lose. Is it worth us just not doing it? Yeah, I'm sure a lot of generals are saying that, but then you end up with these systems that are captured, where doubt is seen as disloyalty, where caution is seen as cowardice.

And so when the mob mentality takes over, you have this risk of escalation. So I'm not saying this is the most probable outcome. I'm saying the most probable outcome is that they'll keep it localized. But I'm just very... but it is definitely the potential yes exactly

bonkers exactly exactly i did look into the nuclear thing and while at first hand it might seem slightly tempting it's actually quite a bad thing even a limited nuclear exchange apparently could blot out something like 10 to 15% of the suns. you know, rays filtering through to the Earth. Does that mean that we end at zero? Well, does that mean the Labour government doesn't need to dim the sun? It means that crop yields significantly decline. It's a disaster. This kind of nuclear war with a...

We're not dealing with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. We're dealing with strategic weapons. A limited exchange assumes that it's only the low-yield stuff that gets used. And even that is enough to block out 15% of the summit. Yeah. Limited exchange nuclear warfare, not good. Yes. Yeah. Right. So for time's sake, I'm afraid we're going to have to wrap this up. But on a scale of sort of one to ten, what do you think the likelihood of this going?

To a limited exchange? Just a very small source. A very managed exchange, I'd say 7 or 8 out of 10. Full out, I'd say 1 out of 10. Put my mind at ease. Could be worse. Right. Do we have video comments, Samson? And by the way, lots of comments are saying a big fan of you coming on the show, a big fan of you doing Brokonomics. Thank you. And really enjoying what you're doing, which is great. Thank you. Let's go.

Unfortunately, I missed the last Zoom call again, but I took my monthly trip down to Yakima to see my hiking friend. Going over the pass, you gotta swing by Owens Meats and Clay Ellum for some pepperoni and jerky. My friend and I decided we were going to do two hikes down in the Columbia River Gorge. A little hazy, but otherwise perfect weather, and the wildflowers were in full bloom.

Both hikes had amazing views of the gorge, Mount Hood on the Oregon side of the river, and Mount Adams with the rural countryside. I'll send part two of this trip tomorrow. Our subscribers live in much nicer places than we do. They do. Let's get to the next one.

This morning on Facebook, a friend asked me to sign a petition outlawing catapults and their ammunition. Bold. Presumably that also would include... sticks shaped like a y pieces of rubber and ball bearings which would send us back into sort of the stone age well not quite you know we'd be in horses and carts wouldn't we um of course i signed

I just hate the government's approach to any problem. It's like, right, okay, if we can just disarm them, it will stop killing each other. It's like, dude, we can do that with fish. You know, like we do rocks and sticks. I mean, come on. It's people, not tools. Exactly. So obviously the problem. Anyway, let's move on.

Interestingly, I have already thought a lot about the guerrilla murder question because this is actually a question was asked on the Super Best Friends podcast way back in the 2010s. And it was funny the discussion they had, because one of the ways they went about it was, okay, half of us are going to have to be the me.

And the other half will forge weapons from the bodies of our fallen comrades to stab him with. Another simple method would be just to use our weight of numbers to hold the gorilla down and just throw the bodies of our dead comrades on his face. and just smother him to death with them.

You've got to wear the gorilla out first, right? So you just form a massive human ring around the gorilla. So if this doesn't make any sense, we're debating can 100 men beat one gorilla? No. Absolutely. It absolutely can. I'm not going to go there. Let's go to the next one. We're going to do a lad's hour on it soon.

All sorts of belligerent anti-Canadian things in there. We're going to make you the 51st state. Of course it's just bluster. Wrong. Trump is a CEO, not a politician, and the media and analysts are not intelligent enough to understand what that means. CEOs measure their value entirely by their ability to deliver what they say they will. If they do not, then they're open to allegations of lying, and the worst insult you can give a CEO is to call him a liar.

When Trump says he wants something then he'll make it happen. Maybe not an invasion but other pressures will be brought to bear. Do you think Trump's going to get Canada? I believe in the League of Temporarily Independent Countries. places like Belgium, Kuwait, Lebanon, Ukraine and Canada. These are countries that sort of

are at the border of big empires and will eventually be swallowed by them. So I don't know if Trump will get it, but I know that eventually the Americans will get Canada. Eventually the Americans will get Canada because, like, why? Or more like why not? Yes. Right, so our societies and civilization as a whole are as complex as they are fragile. A ship blocking a canal in Egypt or a bridge collapsing in Boston can impact the entire world's trade.

We could very well have our own Bronze Age collapse if we do not conserve the means of our way of life, and the power outages in Spain and Portugal show them. Yeah, this is one of the things I kind of really hate our leaders about is how cavalier they are. Yes. Such complex systems.

They are willing to do things based on ideology. And the very nature of an ideology is really to teach someone who doesn't know what they're doing. It's to instruct them on what to do. So it's all... uh deontologically based that you should do this for moral reasons, and now try and make that interface with the real world. Well, you'll notice that the least ideological people are those with the most expertise. Those people, and this is conquest.

first or second law, I can't remember which one it is, he is most conservative about the thing he knows most. Yes. Because you know how complex the system is. You know the things you can impact as you go. Yeah. And that's the problem with ideology. So you've got someone like Ed Miliband who doesn't know anything. Yes. But being highly ideological.

to give him the confidence to make decisions that are going to have severe knock-on effects. And my industry insiders say that they're trying to tell him that exactly the thing, like the Spanish thing, will start happening here, but he just want to hear it. No.

Of course not. And it's completely outside of his realm of expertise, but he has the bravery that comes with ideology. And that's the problem with ideology, frankly. And like I said, the cavalier nature of it just really bothers me. Because they don't know that they're dogmatic. If you know that you're dogmatic and what you're dogmatic about and why you're dogmatic about it, you're actually a lot more intellectually free than someone who believes he has no dogma.

Because the human mind is a dogmatic machine. You have to have a lot of presuppositions to be able to interact with a very uncertain extreme world. And so if you're aware of the fact that you're dogmatic, you're fine because you know why and what it is that you're dogmatic about. You can be free about everything else.

But if you're being dogmatic and you don't even know it, that's when you're extremely dangerous. And often the dogmatism itself is a cover for a lack of knowledge about the subject.

So you can't even admit that you don't know because there'd be a massive public humiliation if Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, came out and said, yeah, I don't really get this. I have no idea how energy generation works. I mean, I'll bet you anything that he doesn't know anything about the video that you showed about how alternating current works.

and how you shift from a spinning system into alternating current and the difference between AC and DC. I'll make a bet with you now that he doesn't know anything about that. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't take it because I'm absolutely certain you're right. But yeah, so this is the thing that terrifies me about the way things are going. Yeah, absolutely. Arizona Desert Rat confirms what I was saying. It's difficult to send direct current over a long distance.

Basically, it has to go twice the distance, and alternating current has to go to complete a cycle. I definitely read something about it, but don't hold me to it. I'm running on GCSE physics here. Yeah, exactly. I'm sure it was like... I just remember from GCSE physics that alternating current was more dangerous, but obviously more effective. Direct current, less dangerous, Bob.

Alistair says, AC in the vast majority of cases will be more efficient for long distance power transmission. There we go. One exception would be the new mega project bringing power from France to Britain. one reason they're using hvdc oh that's what i heard about yeah due to it being able to sync to each current country's grid independently Well, I have no idea. Maybe that's getting around the Hertz thing. RGH says 10 out of 10 Spanish title choice. Well done. People did appreciate it.

Grant says, I think you underestimate how toxic Trump is in Canada. Yeah, no, I don't. I don't underestimate it. I know that they do. I don't get it. I don't get why Canadian... The boomer mind is what's toxic. And the interaction between the boomer mind and Trump is the most toxic. But even our Canadian friends in our sphere are 100% against Canada being swallowed up. And it's like, why? Because why would you want? You don't want to lose the independence of your country. Yeah.

you never want yeah but you're being ruled by libs and frenchmen yeah but better to be ruled by our libs and frenchmen than They're foreigners who take our interest in the end. Enoch Powell on even if this country had a communist government, I'd still fight for it. Exactly. Well, I don't know if I'd be that upset if we became a 51st state. I don't worry about it, you are. Yeah, but I'm with him. Even if Jeremy Corbyn took over, I'd still have...

But Grant carries on. He says, anyone whom would speak in favour becomes untouchable. So starting by saying I'll work with Polyev would have been just as bad. Fair enough. Liberals were able to paint Polly over the brush of Trump, even though he hadn't said anything about working with him.

Ferris' point about the elites of Europe applies equally to Canada. It wouldn't have mattered what he said. 80% of Canada are TDS affected. The rate is 100% amongst the intelligentsia and public service. And that is the important reason to remember. It's the same in Britain.

Like, the Brits are overwhelmingly against Trump, even though most of them don't know anything about Trump. And it's because we have exclusively liberal media. So all they're doing is pumping out one-sided we hate Trump all day, every day. And if you're not invested in the subject, you're just like, wow, that guy sounds bad. And so... Baron Von Warhawk says, Carl, do you honestly believe anything Trump says could ever sway leaders like Macron, MERS or Starmer?

uh well starma starma came over pretty pretty quickly and pretty pragmatically bent the knee um yeah i think there is i think i think in fact there is a way of getting around these people um the thing is The Europeans are no less... thematically driven than the Indians and the Pakistanis. They're just driven by the need for recognition of a different thing.

Essentially, if Trump came over and essentially conceded that morally they were superior to the Americans, even if it was just in a private conversation, it wouldn't have to be this public. I think that would be the first step to them kind of puffing themselves up and being willing to work. But it's a long conversation.

But yeah, no, I think it is possible. I think you just have to know how to deal with the people themselves in the sort of Hannibal way that we were talking about before the podcast than dealing with their... public personas, right? Yes. Actually, Jimbo G's comment there, that kind of gets to the hearts of it. Jimbo says, honestly, Trump seems to have alienated some of the people I know who are at least starting to understand why he's necessary. Yes.

My mum went from low-key sporting to being stuck in the Boomer Truth BBC cycle again. No one likes this sort of constant volatility. But it is very easy to knock boomers back into the cycle. It is, but it was because of Trump's aggressiveness. So Trump came in like he was Genghis Khan conquering a city, right? Whereas, in fact, what he should have done is portrayed himself as like an ascendant king, like the return of Aragorn.

right he should have portrayed it's like no i'm the legitimate king of what all of this and so actually your interests are also my interests even though up until yesterday we were enemies and so if trump had come across with a more regal persona rather than an aggressive warlord person

I think it would have done a lot of good. And it actually would have made them essentially go, he's going to be all right. And if he had that persona, he wouldn't have won the American elections. No, no, I don't know if that's true. I think a lot of it was assuming... I think a lot of his appeal was actually assuming that he's got that potential in him. And I think a lot of it was assumed that...

You know, he's a fighter, and when he wins, he is actually going to be a fairly fair governor. And to be fair, he's not a terribly unfair governor. But this is the sort of thing that Nigel Farage is stuck in. Like he, Nigel Farage is stuck in the boxing position where he's like, I've got to punch every, everyone around me. But it's like, Nigel, at this point, you could just claim to be the king of the right wing.

Like, no one can challenge Nigel Farage, you know. And for some reason, he's not stepping into the authority of the role and saying, no, I am the kingmaker. I'm the power broker. Everyone's going to do what I say, as I say it, because I'm Nigel Farage and I spent 30 years doing it.

Trump needed to move into that role as well, and he's kind of failed, which I hate to say we're out of time, but I won't, so I can't really give you... Well, I mean, one very quick comment that I'll throw in, because it's something that we didn't touch on, we probably should have done, and Pete Collins says, from a broader perspective, the war between India and Pakistan begins in earnest. What is the likelihood of widespread violence erupting in the UK and Europe?

will that risk lead to a European diplomatic intervention? I mean, the risk is 100% as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, it's guaranteed to happen. There'll be no European diplomatic intervention because why would India and Pakistan care what Europe... we're bradford and leicester i mean just up in smoke yeah it's gonna be terrible but we are out of time and we have after this

a roundtable coming up, where we're going to be discussing, in fact, the consequences of our immigration policy and what could be done differently to make things better. So thank you for joining us, folks. Join us on lowseas.com for the roundtable, and we will see you tomorrow for the podcast.