Today's guest is an expert on warfare,
political violence, and the collapse of
empires.
>> Iran, I believe, their number one
objective is to damage America
economically. We've taken on the most
difficult country to beat since Germany
in World War II.
>> A political science professor at the
University of Chicago, he's taught
generals now running the Iran War and
advised every US president since 9/11.
What we're coming to are the most
dangerous elections in our lifetimes. 40
million American adults believe the use
of force is justified to remove Trump
from the presidency. Republicans may
never win another election. In this
episode, we'll break down the simulation
he's been running for 20 years that
predicted this war, expose the trap
pulling America deeper into a fight we
might not win, and question if the most
powerful empire in human history is one
wrong move away from total collapse. I'm
24 American man. Will I get drafted to
this war?
>> Um, Professor Robert Pape, welcome to
the Jack Noil podcast.
>> Uh, thanks Jack. Thanks for having me.
Uh, it's really I've done a lot of
podcasts, but yours is really
particularly an exciting opportunity for
me. Really is an honor. Um,
I'll start it off here saying a lot of
my audience is young men,
>> many of which have never voted, likely
couldn't find Iran on a map a year ago.
Why do you think young men should care
about the war in Iran?
>> They should care because this is the
conflict that will the international
conflict that will affect their futures
uh more than uh the conflicts uh since
9/11 have. So we had two forever wars
after 9/11. We had this forever war in
Afghanistan, forever war in Iraq. And
that did affect some small subset of the
f of of America's male uh their futures.
But that was purely through voluntary uh
induction, volunteering uh to go into
the military. Uh and for most Americans,
and this is most males in America, uh
the economy was not wrecked. Um this did
not really have a big effect on jobs,
for example. Uh and so if unless they
chose specifically to go into the
military uh which was again relatively
small segment here um uh the amount the
impact on this uh of those wars was was
not really uh was not going to change
their life. It just didn't change their
life. Uh now for those who did serve it
many changed their life. We had between
the 6,600 killed as in the military.
That's double the number we lost on 911,
just to be clear. And we have tens of
thousands who are badly wounded for the
rest of their lives. They've survived,
but it's real. The amount of uh you
know, personal injury here was quite
serious. Now, this war, we're uh so far
have very little personal injury to the
uh those that serve. Uh that may or may
not continue. I think it's uh this war
is going on long enough that that may
actually change. But the one thing that
is happening already is the economic
consequences and these economic
consequences are going to be felt first
and foremost by the youngest in our uh
country and uh that is definitely going
to be affecting young men. That's going
to have uh significant effects in uh
whether guys who are uh say 18 who don't
want to go to college decide they want
to get a job. This is going to be much
more difficult. Right now, just uh
today, yesterday, Jack, the unemployment
rate is 4.3%.
Uh if we can keep it under 7% by the end
of the year, we're doing fantastic. As
time goes on, it could become even worse
than that. Inflation is also uh are
likely to go up tremendously over the
next uh uh 6 to 8 months. This is going
to impact uh people who are 18 years
old. Now then there's also folks who are
going to say well okay so I won't get a
job what I'm going to do is I want to go
to college uh either um get an
associates degree or get a uh get a
bachelor's degree. Well here the problem
is uh colleges were already getting uh
uh hurt economically because there's a
big battle with the Trump administration
and and universities. Uh but now what's
going to happen with the economic
fallout of the war? those universities
are going to lose funds even more there.
What that means is the uh offers to have
um tuition relief, some sort of various
forms of scholarships. These will be
shrinking over time. Uh and they'll be
shrinking right for the people we're
we're talking to uh here on this
podcast. Then though you have another
factor here. Universities in the last 30
years have uh gone to international
students in droves to cover full
freight. That is to get them to pay the
full costs. Well, with the Trump war on
universities, this is having a dramatic
effect on the international students. Uh
and I know because I teach international
relations at the University of Chicago.
Oh, I was just in China last June. So,
what you're getting is you're getting
the shrinkage of that pool. So, what
that means is that the need for the
American students to pay higher freight,
maybe not quite still full freight is
going up. So, the price of this is going
up. That was before the Iran war. Okay.
So, this is what they're really the
these are the real pressures here.
they're going to come to bear and why um
uh a lot of folks uh are now just give
you the third pressure because I see
this I I deal I was spent all like four
hours last night with 45 students uh who
are all 21 to 23 years old talking about
various things uh but AI so now there's
the idea well wait a minute okay so now
I'm going to take out all this debt and
it's going to get worse with the Iran
war and when I get out I'm going to have
even less chance of getting a job and
and unemployment rate might already be
professor pap saying going up
significantly and that's not even taking
AI into account. So, so these are the
real challenges, the reasons why um the
last thing 16 to 22 year olds want is uh
this this Iran war taking on Iran. We've
taken on the most difficult country to
beat since Germany in World War II or
maybe the so you say the Soviet Union.
Okay. But Iran wasn't a great power like
Germany. It wasn't a great power like
the Soviet Union. We're making Iran, a
major power uh as we go forward, but
this is this was the biggest one. Uh
much more difficult than Vietnam, uh
much more difficult than Iraq, much more
difficult than Afghanistan. And so the
consequences
of taking on that much more dangerous,
difficult uh uh foe are going to be with
us really significantly longer. Uh this
is not just going away. We don't have an
easy out over the next few weeks.
>> Are we spending like what is it 500
million a day in this?
>> It's probably 1 to2 billion a day now
with the funny account the phony. So, at
the moment, I don't trust any of the
accounting coming out of the uh uh of
the administration. Um, so when I look
at what is likely the cost of this war,
um about uh 2 weeks into the war, the
Trump administration went to Congress to
get an extra 200 billion to cover the
next six months of the war. 200 billion
for about 180 days. And I think that's
probably as good as you're going to get
as what the the best accounting is until
we go through several years. Two or
three years from now, uh we'll probably
get um you know 80 90% clarity on that
accounting. We may never get 100%
clarity. But in the middle of this uh
war where we're failing strategically, I
mean it's a disaster of the first order.
The last thing that's going to happen
is, you know, direct honest accounting
where um the administration is going to
come forward when and say, "Oh, okay.
Let's really release all this." When
Trump came in, the very first thing he
did and Doge did uh was get rid of all
of the accountants, so to speak. Uh
rather than continue them and rather
than just say, "Oh, well, we just need
our own political appointees." Uh no,
no, they just zeroed out the offices
altogether. So, so what that means is
the umpires, so to speak, have been
removed from the game, right?
>> So, it's like playing a baseball game,
uh, without umpires on the field on the
field. You you're expecting the players
now to call balls and strikes
>> and and who's and whether who got tagged
out at first or not, you know, you don't
really have the umpires anymore.
>> No one's making sure we have enough
money essentially.
>> Well, that's right. and and with our
debt situation $40 trillion and
climbing, the last thing we need is a
war that is going to be uh global in
nature of an economic nature. What I'm
saying is you're going to have a global
um uh crush of the economy uh because
we're not in the good position
economically to withstand that.
>> When do you predict that would happen
by?
>> It doesn't work that way, Jack. So, so
having um
>> or what would be an indicator? Oh, the
bond rates. Oh, you can you'll see it
coming with the bond rates. So, the
first thing people look at to try to
understand the health of the economy is
to look at uh the stock market,
>> right?
>> Well, it's really important to know
though that uh only half of the adult
population has any money in the stock
market at all. And um 80% of the stock
market's uh value is held by 10% of the
adults. 10% of the adults. These are
basically rich people at the casino
table. Okay. So for everybody else, you
may want to be that rich person at the
casino table. I can certainly see you're
60. You say, "I want to get there. I
want to be in that 10% or even better
than that." Um, but the fact is it's a
measure of the money that's slloshing
around to invest in companies and a much
better sense of the health of the of the
country are interest rates, things that
are boring. You don't even see them
reported very often. You have these
bubbles in the stock market that burst
here. The interest rates are the leading
indicator. And when those interest rates
start to go up here, um it's a it's a
serious problem because what that means
in ordinary people's languages is uh uh
when you borrow money from like your
folks here and uh they don't charge you
interest rate usually. When you borrow
from a bank, they charge you interest
rate. Well, these bonds that I'm talking
about, this is the government borrowing
the money. So, they got to pay that
interest rate. And those interest rates
go up, you lose a lot of your money,
right? Real quick. How many years or
months would the war have to go on
before you think that would be pretty
likely?
>> A a good um uh benchmark here is 197374
because that's when there was an oil
embargo on the United States on the
world essentially from um uh these
countries uh in an organization called
OPEC. It's a it's the group of oil
producing countries. Saudi Arabia is the
biggest in OPEC. And uh what they did is
they were really angry about uh America
supporting Israel in the 1973 war
between Israel and the Arab countries.
And so these Arab mostly Arab states in
OPEC, they decided to cut off oil.
That's a pretty big deal. And they kept
it off for 151 days. That was only 6% of
world supply. uh hormuse today is 20%.
Um but they kept it off for 151 days.
That is what led to the doubling of
inflation, the doubling of unemployment
within 12 months. And over the next 6 to
8 years, interest rates um today the
interest rate on a home is a little over
6%. In the 1970s, it was 16%.
that came as a ripple effect, a wave
effect of that 151 days. But where we
are today is around day 70 just to put
it in perspective. If we get to say
July, August, and there's been no real
change here, and that is completely
plausible. Uh so in the short term,
Jack, this looks like um $5 gas,
>> right?
>> In July, maybe we're talking about 650
gas. Okay. And people will then start to
notice unemployment going up because as
you have the gas prices go up, you have
to lay off people. You're you're not
just uh paying more money. You're you're
literally going to be laying off people
because a lot of industries can't afford
that. The um the airplines are the
leading case of that. They're always the
leading indicator because jet fuel is so
expensive. So,
>> so do you think with what's happening
right now,
>> about 6 months to a 12 months is when
you could have a gigantic problem,
right?
>> And that's why we need to try to uh uh
do something uh within that period of
time. So, do you think with what's
happening now, like do you think Iran is
trying to destroy the US dollar? All
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But anyway, guys, back to the podcast.
It's probably trying to do that more
directly. My assessment is the way
they're thinking about it is what can
they do to destroy the Trump presidency.
So if you look at it from a security
like let's say I'm the national security
adviser of Iran uh and what is my number
one problem? Well my number one problem
is not the blockade and it's uh not even
the bombing that's already happened. The
number one problem is for the last
several years, Israel and the United
States have bombed me and bombed me
extensively just whenever they felt like
it. They've killed my negotiators. So
instead of, you know, I might say I'll
have a negotiating track with them, but
twice now when Iran has been negotiating
a deal with President Trump, the
Israelis have literally used the
tactical intelligence of where those
diplomats will be to kill them. If
you're looking at this from an Iran's
perspective at all, how are you going to
stop that? How do you get yourself out
of a situation where
>> Trump was trying to close the
negotiation with the negotiator and 3
days before he was about to sign it, the
Israel military killed the guy.
>> In June, we had what was called the
12-day war. Well, that was started when
um Israel decided that they would take
advantage of knowing where the Iran
negotiators were going to be. And so the
uh the fact is uh Trump was going to
meet with them. And u he can't he
couldn't because they were killed. They
were literally killed. But what that
shows you is that when you're when
you're thinking about this from Ron's
perspective, well, you can talk about
negotiations, but that's a giant
question mark at every single stage. So,
what do you do to um uh deter, prevent,
stop, or diminish the risk of future
attacks by the United States and Israel?
You would like to uh wreck the Trump
administration, not that he would be
removed from office. In fact, you you
want him badly hobbled. You want him um
discombobulated. You want him where
there's many internal problems that are
just consuming his every waking moment.
You don't really, if you're Iran,
actually want him replaced with a more
effective leader. That would not that
would not suit your goals. So you're you
really are in a situation where Iran, I
believe their number one objective is to
wreck the Trump administration
politically
uh in the United States and then let it
stay there for another 2 years uh here
in a hobbled state. And does that mean
that America will never attack you? Uh
no. Um but it probably gives you um as
much um uh protection as anything else
you're going to do. And then you can
also see right away, Jack, why the odds
that you're going to want to surrender
like your control of Hormuz, this is
just very unlikely. I mean, if you give
Hormuz back and and we go back to the
status quo, Annie, like the Trump
administration is saying, well, then why
isn't the Trump administration a few
months later just going to go and start
up the war again on some other grounds?
Now, part of what that means then to
hurt the Trump administration
politically is to damage uh America
economically. Uh it's also when the more
you damage uh the world economically
right now the blame is going directly on
Trump. So who who is Europe most mad at?
Who's merit the leader of Germany? Who
are they most mad at right now for the
economic problems and all the problems
they're facing uh here? Uh it's actually
not Iran, it's Trump. It's or America.
It's actually even big. It's it's bigger
than Trump now. They just blame America
because America's reelected Trump.
Elected him twice. So So this isn't even
just a Trump problem from the Europeans
perspective. This is America who's
really to blame. uh and without America
then they think Israel wouldn't have
done the bombing. So yes, they would
blame Israel too, but it's really
America who's getting the lion share of
the blame. And that's true for Asia as
well. That's true for Japan as well. So
it's not just our allies are are not
rushing to come to our aid or aid of the
Trump administration's bad war with
throwing their assets into a bad plan.
they're just uh seeing Trump as the
cause of the problem and it's America
who's underneath that because we elected
the guy twice,
>> right?
>> So, you add all this up and Iran doesn't
have um incentives to fix the economic
problem for the world. They have
incentives to let it ride probably at
least another four or 6 months. Maybe by
the time we get into January of next
year, the world will stop blaming
America and Israel. Maybe it'll start
blaming Iran more. But it's going to
take time to do that because so much
anger has already come out here and it's
so obvious that that the war would not
have started if Trump had not given the
green light to Israel and then we jumped
in at on February 28th. There's just no
plausible story to spin. Iran was not
about to attack the straight of form.
there there's no plausible pretext here.
You see what I mean? So this is why um
Iran is gaining power. It is hurting the
world's economy by gaining that control
of Hormuz which is then fragmenting
America's allies in the Gulf uh with
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia now just this week
telling us they really don't want to you
us using their airspace anymore um here
because that means we they're getting
hurts. Their survival is going down.
just to give people an idea that are
unfamiliar
brief breakdown on straight up hormuse
why it's important and
uh I want to ask you about Xihinping's
meeting with Trump and what kind of that
will be about. Iran is on um the north
eastern side of uh Hormuz. Uh Saudi
Arabia, the other Gulf States on the
other side. And what you see right away
with this waterway is a very narrow wasp
waste around this area called Hormuz.
Then you will say, "Oh my god, you mean
20% of the world's energy, that's uh 20%
of the world's oil, 30% of the world's
natural gas. There's other things like
30% of the world's fertilizer that all
comes through that little narrow wasp
place, that little bitty space. Um, and
you can see right away, boy, if uh if
Iran's mad, why don't they just grab it?
Okay.
>> What was the thing that triggered them
closing it?
>> So, in the 1930s is when oil was
discovered in the Persian Gulf. Uh Saudi
Arabia was the first, 1938. And once
you've discovered the one in Saudi
Arabia, then it was uh quick soon after
that you discovered, oh, Iraq has a
puddle of oil, Iran has a puddle of oil,
and so does Kuwait. Those are the four
big puddles of oil in this in this area,
and they're all like a horseshoe band
around Hormuz. So what happened was um
Iran has always um been we've we've had
concerns for decades that Iran would uh
in a military conflict close the
straight of foremost. So because Iran
used to be uh run by uh the Shaw of Iran
who was an American puppet. We helped
install him in the ' 50s then got
toppled in 79. That's the revolution we
hear about uh here and uh well since
1979 there's been a huge concern that
Iran might close the straight of Hormuz
if there was a conflict. And so what
does that mean if you're in the
Pentagon? You got to think about well
what are my priorities here? What are
the dangerous things I need contingency
plans on? And the number one is going to
be horm. If you wanted to crash the
global economy or maybe the US economy,
like is there any
one action that would do more damage
than keeping the straight of Formoose
permanently closed?
>> No, there are some other choke points.
Just so you know, there's a straight
called the straight of Malaka here.
Nowhere near as big as what and there
are lots of ways around the straight of
Malaka here with the straight of Hormuz.
The problem is so it's literally a um a
horseshoe
um with uh water that is a dead end and
the only way out is hormones. There's no
other way out. Uh they built some
pipelines uh which can carry couple
percent of that oil out. Um but the but
the challenge here is that um once you
are down to that horseshoe, it's not
just the ships that are vulnerable, but
those pipelines are vulnerable too.
They're not uh being protected by
anything. And so you the real uh issue
is there. You're quite right. There is
no other spot on the planet that could
wreck the world's economy as efficiently
as Hormuz. If you were designing, if you
if you came if you you know, we're
looking at whether we have UFOs now that
came out yesterday. Uh if you're saying,
well, okay, I'm coming from another
galaxy and I want to wreck the planet
Earth's economy. What would I do? You
wouldn't need AI. You would just do a
mapping and you would see right away you
would do something to totally shut down
traffic on that little uh little artery,
that little choke point called hormones.
>> And what would you do if you wanted them
to shut it down.
>> Versions of what we're doing. So, what
we're doing is blocking the ships.
There's no way to uh get those that oil
and gas out of that area except by ship.
It's too heavy. So, you can't fly it
out. You might think, well, okay, if we
really need it, couldn't we just fly it
out? No. You're moving this stuff out,
and there's no way to do it except by
ship. So, how do you block the ships? uh
you um can literally have a blockade
where you have US uh ships or you have
um Iranian vessels here that say if you
cross my line I will sink you. Uh you
can have drones which you don't need an
actual line. You just use your drones to
shoot down the ships. Or you could
literally mine the entire straight. You
could just um Iran has 5,000 mines.
These are essentially similar to World
War II vintage mines if you ever saw the
movies. They're just big fat hunks of of
of iron that have explosives in them and
they are set to go off. Most of them on
contact. You you touch it goes it goes
off. Can you clarify for me? So like
what military
resources
uh ships, weapons, humans, etc. like are
currently in Hormuse from the US and
then what do the Iranians have there?
the last um several years we've had a
set of 13 bases in the Persian Gulf.
These are I mentioned one uh base that
was at IUD air base and that is inqatar.
Cutter is a little peninsula island like
uh country just on the uh it's on the
western side of the Gulf and it just
kind of jets out a little bit like a
peninsula. Well, we would have in
addition to those bases and the navy you
need some logistic support. So somewhere
around 30 40,000 troops, but these were
not organized as
as combat troops. They weren't uh tank
divisions. They weren't aircraft. Uh we
did have some aircraft in IUD air base
uh cuz that's one of our bomber bases.
So there was some fighter units. Uh but
most of it was actually just logistics.
Then what happened is starting in
January, we added. So that was the the
the foundation if you would Jack. Then
starting in January, we uh over a period
of about six weeks, we moved hundreds of
uh land-based uh fighter uh aircraft,
fighter bomber aircraft. Uh these are
F-35s, other aircraft. Uh we added an
additional carrier. We added destroyers.
We we added
>> What's a destroyer? The way we organize
our navy is we we build uh our entire
concept around a carrier. So the carrier
is a floating airfield and then we have
ships around the carrier, the
destroyers, the uh a cruiser and then
also submarines. And what they're doing
is a double mission. Mission number one,
protect the carrier. That's like your
king in chess. You got to protect the
king. But just as in chess uh here the
pieces that protect the king can also
attack. So that's what's happening with
the the way the organization of a of the
navy is is set up. We had uh uh some
naval forces there before. It was mostly
a naval mission. Uh and then it was set
up for what's called presence to just
sort of give confidence that we're there
and an anchor of support like an
insurance policy if ever needed. That's
what the idea of just being there is
about. Well, then what we did though
starting in January is we expanded and
this goes on for about 6 weeks. Um and
um uh and it could be that we that maybe
that's when they started to have the
idea we were going to do this bombing
mission or it could be they were there
initially to do something like say
support the pro-democracy movement that
was u getting clobbered in um uh in Iran
at the time. uh and then maybe things
just evolve from there. Uh but the
bottom line is when they added they
added uh the aircraft those aircraft um
were part of then what became the air
campaign that was going on day after
day. How did we hit 12,000 targets? You
did it with a lot of that land-based
aircraft.
>> So what was the first action we took on
Iran? So this then we get to February
28.
Um so this happened uh was triggered by
the day before at 3:00 3:15 in the Oval
Office. President Trump met with U.
Jared Kushner, Steve Whit. These were
the two people negotiating with the
Iranian diplomats and the Iran had
presented a deal and the deal uh was
that Iran uh would uh keep um the 3.5%
enriched uranium on its soil. Uh it
would promise not to enrich beyond that
and it would dilute it 60% enriched
uranium to meld it in with the 3.5% but
it would keep it on its soil. And just
to clarify on that point, so you're
saying that uh I think it's Iran has the
capability to potentially build 13
nuclear bombs and they have enough to 16
10 to 16
>> 10 to 16. There's a little bit of
ambiguity because it's a little hard to
know exactly how efficient they can be.
>> So 10 to 16 is a is a real number.
>> And I'm guessing what Trump was told was
something along the lines of uh like
they are months away from these nuclear
capabilities. uh they're being they're
measuring it in months and weeks,
>> right? So the bottom line is um that for
Iran to build uh working nuclear
weapons, they need a certain amount of
90% enriched uranium. And to get to 90%
enriched uranium, uh they have to go
through a process where it's a serial
process. You first enrich it from 0 to
3.5%.
Then from 3.5%
it's uh the next stage which is to 20%.
Then the next stage is to 60%. Then the
next stage is to 90%. And at each stage
it's you can measure the time it takes.
It takes about 3 months at each stage.
So, it's it's uh the last stage goes a
little quicker, but it's the bottom line
is it's about a year to go from uh uh
uranium ore in the ground to um the
material for for a bomb. Whether you're
going to have material for one bomb, 20
bombs, doesn't it's that time is is is
very very predictable. So we uh then can
measure this by knowing the quant how
far Iran is from a working nuclear
weapon. Now once they have the 90% it's
important to know that it it's going to
take probably um somewhere between 3
months 6 months 9 months for them to
fashion it into a working weapon.
>> Were they at 90%.
>> They were 60. They were at 60. So they
were about five or 6 weeks away uh from
finishing it to get to 90%. That's when
we bombed last June. So when we bombed
last June, they were at 60%
and um uh they could have we don't know
if they were doing it, but they could
have gotten to 90% easily within 2
months, within 6 weeks. So they were
only a few weeks away from the 90%. But
that's not quite means it's a bomb
because you have to then fashion that uh
material into a working weapon. That
does not take years and years. Um this
is World War II technology. This is
metal energy coming out of a metal shop.
You don't need the fancy um uh stuff
that we do that we developed in the 50s
and 60s with bombs that have yields much
bigger than Hiroshima Nagasaki. So So
what we're when we're measuring this,
we're measuring their ability to do a
Hiroshima or Nagasaki, which by the way
is pretty awful. So, so once you've had
that, you the rest of it becomes the the
when I teach this, the students become
much less interested in how to build a
hydrogen bomb because the Hiroshima bomb
is already so bad.
>> Dumb question here. If you blow up like
enriched uranium at 90%. Does nothing
happen?
>> No. Yes, that's right. So, in order to
um so I'll give you the a mini version
of this of this lecture here. So, one of
the key things to know um about um an
atomic bomb is people are often uh often
think that an atomic bomb is all about
uh the complicated way to trigger a bomb
to an atomic bomb to go off. What they
don't realize is that when you're
working with this enriched uranium, you
it is already unstable.
And so what you're doing with the
enriched uranium is you're increasing it
to 90%. So that the instability of each
atom, an electron of one atom comes off
and bounces into another atom or causing
another atom to lose an electron and
then you end up having a chain reaction
so that it geometrically occurs quickly
like in a a 500th of a second. And what
you're doing then is it's a function of
whether that material is all together. I
have 90% if I literally had 90% enriched
uranium in this cup here. Okay. And it's
actually going to be bigger than I don't
see a gallon jug, but if I had a gallon
jug of it, it would go off right in the
jug. Okay? So, you need to store it in
ways that the uh atoms and the electrons
don't bounce into each other all the
time.
um at at a what's called a critical
mass, right?
>> And the critical mass of uranium 235 is
40 lb. So that's a gallon jug uh here.
So if you bring 40 lb of uranium 235
together, even if it's just piled up
right here on this table, you're going
to get a chain reaction. A nuclear
explosion is going to occur right in
front of us. What an atomic bomb does,
what the weapon does is keep the pieces
of that far enough apart, it doesn't go
off and then it brings it together when
you want it to.
>> It looks like a gun shooting at another
one.
>> Yep. And what the gun is doing is you
hollow, you take that 40 lbs and um so I
I'll use this as an example. Okay. You
have an artillery tube uh here and this
is um the uh the snout of the gun and
you build a it's a cylinder that has a
hollow middle and that uh hollow middle
then is the bullet that's on this end of
the gun. So how do you make the uh gun
type uh this was the uh fat man in that
did Hiroshima. How do you make it go
off? You literally just have some
gunpowder. You just hit it just like an
artillery tube. That ignites the
gunpowder. It shoots the bullet, but the
bullet is the uranium 235 now. And in
the 15,000th of a second that there is a
fit between uh the two parts of the
metal here. Boom. That's what causes it
to go off. And that's why what's when
you when you drop these things uh here,
the odds of them going off are actually
quite remote. Cuz usually if you drop an
atomic these one of these bombs, the
pieces go the other way.
>> I do want to just clarify. So if they
have enriched uranium at 90% and you
blow that up, does that blow up bigger?
>> Uh it goes out. The pro the problem is
there will be some it'll be like a um a
rad it's called a radiological bomb.
You'll have some pollution. So it's not
um benign.
If you blow it up and you scatter it uh
here, you end up with these radioactive
particles, it's not a bomb. So, it's not
as bad as a bomb. It's usually called a
fizzle or something like that. Uh but
it's a um uh it is going to cause
pollution. So, this is why the idea that
we would just go in and keep like say
bombing the area over and over and over
again. No, somebody is going to probably
just excavate this stuff out. The
Iranians may have already done that
already, but you're you're you're not
going to be um satisfied by just keep
bombing it. It's because even if you
tried to really create this, you're
going to leave so much pollution uh for
it to then waft around, bad things are
going to happen. Is this just not a
realistic uh approach? The realistic
approach uh here is uh to go after the
stuff is either the Iranians voluntarily
give it to us uh or we uh physically
take it from them in a fist in an actual
fight where we're going to use military
force to go get it. Uh there's not a a
an alternative here. Um we've probably
even thought about you know using like
attack nuke to try to take it out and
the problem is attack nuke creates all
the radiation. So all the ways you would
think about trying to encase this in
some way um are are just not
satisfactory
uh here uh because either because the
means like a tactical nuclear weapon
well that's just another way in which
the radiation is going to come wafting
back. Yes, you will you eliminate one
problem but you'll create another
problem. So, it it seems to me that Iran
wasn't weeks away from building a bomb.
Would you say that's true?
>> I think um most likely 6 months at the
fastest. I would say most likely 6
months to 9 months is a more realistic.
They hadn't tested one before. So, they
still have to go through the trouble of
doing everything for the first time. uh
they would need another month uh
probably six weeks to have gone from 60%
to 90%. Then they need um another 6
months after that to confidently go to
weaponizing the parts of the bomb. So
that's why I say it's 6 7 months 9
months but not 2 3 years not 5 years not
7 years uh within a within a 69month
period of time for sure. So, you've been
simulating this war for over 20 years
and accurately predicted the bombing of
Foraux, uh, Iran closing the straight of
Hormuz, and US Marines being sent off
the coast of Iran.
>> For everyone watching this right now,
when they open their phones tomorrow
morning, what's the one thing they
should look for in the news to tell them
where this war is actually going? number
one thing to see is uh whether or not
and you could do this every single
morning is uh how many ships have passed
through hormones. Uh so this is the by
far the absolute leading indicator. So
uh we ha we know as a fact that uh uh
140 ships a day on average pass through
the straight of Hormos before the war.
We know there are over 1500 ships in
that upper horseshoe shoe band I was
describing waiting just sitting there
waiting to leave and um war is going to
change materially in the next uh the
next few days or the next week or so uh
materially for the advantage of the
United States the west the world economy
it's going to be with the number of
ships passing through Hormos so there's
an absolute straightforward indicator
and that's the very first thing to see.
Now, if you don't see those ships, and
we have not seen this change much in the
last uh 70 days. So, there's been a tiny
little wiggle room here where some days
it's uh near zero, some days it's five,
some days it's been up as high as 10 or
11 a day, but that's pretty far away
from 140 a day. So, we have nothing that
looks like uh the pre-war status quo. Um
and then if you don't see that moving,
uh the next thing is to look for uh
indications of um uh logistic flights.
These are the flights that you bring in
just before you're about to unleash a
wave of uh military action. When I was
looking at tracking the uh whether or
not we were going to start the bombing
on February 28, exactly what I was
looking at was was the straight was
open, but what I was looking at was the
movement of aircraft to the region,
carriers to the region, and then as we
got closer, the movement of the C17s,
and then especially when we started to
uh fly in a lot of what are called
KC135s. These are the aerial refueling
tankers. So once we once we started to
move the true logistic footprint of of
the operation
that I've never seen that happen without
bombs falling.
>> Would you consider troop movements to be
a major indicator?
>> Yes. Yes. But we that's what I was
telling people to watch in uh the first
uh two weeks of the war when I was being
interviewed. Then I was walking through
the stages of the escalation trap. I
call it where I had modeled this for 20
years. We're about to get into a trap
where we're going to have bombs hit
targets. This will not topple the
regime. The regime in fact will
strengthen and lash back. And because we
hadn't moved enough force, there's a
very easy target for them to lash back
against which is Hormuz. And so uh then
as uh they uh control uh Hormuz, we'll
be in a ground power dilemma. That was
uh stage three where uh we would then
have to be uh thinking seriously about
ground force options as the only way to
take back Hormuz. And so as the bombs
then fell and as we had stage one just
as I laid out and then stage two just as
I laid out, people said, "Well, okay,
what what are the indicators? We might
be moving to ground operations." And I
said, "Well, the key indicator is just
literally moving the Marines." Uh, and
then we started to move the Marines. So,
the bottom line is, uh, you're right
that you would also track troop
movements. Well, that's what I was
saying the first few weeks because we
hadn't moved those ground troops in.
Now, we've moved at least the beginning
of those in. Now, if we move more ground
troops in, well, for sure. And then, but
that'll be so obvious, you won't need
PAPE for that. uh what PAP is there to
tell you. It's it's a forecast here or
to give uh indicators that are not so
obvious to the media. Uh that's mostly
what I'm doing with the Substack and
it's the things that the professionals
are looking at. They're looking at the
logistic flows. They're not just looking
at the troop movements. The troop
movements are the tippy part of the
spear. The logistics make the spear
move.
>> Right. So, when Trump launched Operation
Project Freedom last week, what is
Project Freedom and did Trump just make
a bet that could end America?
>> Yeah. So, he made a bet uh when he did
this and what he's betting is with
Project Freedom that he could literally
run the blockade by Iran and Iran would
not fire back. Uh now, how could he
think he could run the blockade? Well, I
just explained to you sort of Hormuz has
uh there's a horseshoe at the one end
and then there's a wasp voice. Well,
there are these narrow channels through
Hormuz and Iran had blocked one of those
uh several of those with mines. Well,
what what we have done is we have
verified a certain very narrow uh width
of water that you can pass through
hormuz that has no minds. And that's
what I mean by President Trump want to
send ships to run the blockade. So he's
these couple of ships that we got
through. They went through this narrow
band of water that uh we had verified
were cleared of mines. So we we know the
danger is pretty low for mines. Um and
um and what Trump was doing um uh was
betting that Iran would not fire back,
would not try to sink those ships, would
not try to attack the Navy ships that
are we we moved a couple of destroyers
closer to help protect the ships if they
needed it. Trump was betting that Iran
would not send what are these little
fast boats. These are these little
cigarette boats and they uh have uh
squads of guys between say six and 10 on
the boats here and they'll carry weapons
and uh um they can even carry mines. Uh
anyway, and so but what happened here is
uh he got two through two boats, two
ships came through, but then that was
all that got through because Iran did
immediately respond uh almost
immediately respond uh here and they
attacked a South Korean ship uh here. Uh
and so that South Korean ship did not
make it through and then the uh other
ships, you know, turned around. So that
stopped ships coming through. But on top
of that, uh, Iran did two other things.
First of all, they fired, uh, missiles
at our destroyers. Now, we claimed, uh,
that we they were going to hit the
destroyers and we shot them down. Iran
claimed they were warning shots and not
meant to hit the destroyers, but the
bottom line is they were near enough to
our destroyers that that's a that's a
real threat uh, here. So, that so Trump
lost the bet right there. the the idea I
mean it's one thing you could say well
he didn't lose the bet because it was
only a South Korean ship once he's once
there's fire against our US ships he
lost the bet right there
>> was there any scenario in which he would
have won that bet
>> oh sure that the that Iran would have um
not fired Iran would have just stepped
down Iran would have been intimidated or
you could maybe uh kind of um imagine
China would tell Iran that it had had
enough and and and China would tell Iran
to let the ships pass or you could
imagine Russia would tell Iran to let
the ships pass. Uh I don't know what was
making the Trump or the White House
confident they could actually run this
blockade. It's that's that it's a real
risk and it's a bet that Trump was never
likely to win in my estimation. But then
on top of that, there was a third thing
that happened, which is um Iran attacked
a uh an oil facility that was actually a
UAE oil facility on the other side of
the straight of Hormuz, which was in
this uh Gulf of Oman. That's a little
further out on the eastern southeastern
part of uh uh Hormuz. And that was uh at
this area called Fyra, which was the
tail end of a pipeline that the UAE had.
That's a working pipeline, which is the
only oil uh coming from the UAE that was
getting out was going and bypassing the
straight of Hormuz altogether and coming
out at Pyra and then getting into the
Gulf of Oman and then going on its merry
way. Well, when Iran hit Pyra, that
scared everybody. That's when the oil
prices went up to 115 or whatever it
was, they they jumped again because
right away that makes it absolutely
clear that Iran is going to gain more
control of the straight of Hormuz oil.
It had already gotten about um 75%
control of the oil, maybe 80%. But then
now it's starting to take away the
pipelines. Hadn't done that before. It
left those pipelines alone. And the UAE
is one pipeline. Saudi Arabia had a
bigger pipe. So this is putting at risk
the final little bits of oil that we're
getting out from the Persian Gulf. The
Saudis called up and said we don't want
anything to do with this uh and to to to
the white uh to the White House and then
also Kuwait. Uh, and so that's when
President Trump pulled the plug on his
own plan within 24 hours of having
started this whole plan. It it was it
was a disaster. Uh, I think they're
still trying to start it back up, but
that what you're seeing, Jack, is this
is what's underneath these these
skirmishes where you're you're now
getting um almost every day uh some
shooting going back and forth between
the Iranian uh the Iranians and and the
American Navy and it's over. you uh
coers Iran to stand down, Iran
voluntarily stands down, or you take the
the coastal region and prevent Iran from
attacking those ships. There's not a
third way.
So Trump lost the bet. If America loses
that bet under pretty much every
scenario except minority few, like why
did Trump take this bet at all? Well,
well, notice this is now the third time
he's taken a bet. So, on February 28th,
he started what uh he said was supposed
to be just a two or three day air
campaign that's going to in his mind
cause the current regime to completely
collapse and it's then going to be
replaced um uh by some pro-democracy
movement uh which he's opening the
gateway for is the way uh that he's he's
describing it. Uh well, that failed. It
failed, Jack, because what happened is
we the bombs hit their targets, um the
uh leaders were killed that that were
targeted, but instead of the regime
collapsing, uh the politics of the
regime just brought the regime even
closer together and made it even more
aggressive. What we call the regime in
Iran, you can think of it as a threepart
regime. You can think of it as the
original supreme leader who we then
killed, but the original leader was a
cleric. uh uh a religious man and he was
uh at the top but then he was over the
military that's the Islamic uh
revolutionary guards uh and then he was
also over the political leaders like say
the parliament or the president or the
foreign minister so that's a threepart
regime um and what happened when we
killed the supreme leader the new
supreme leader was elevated essentially
from the revolutionary guards. He was
the son of the supreme leader, but he
was somebody who to stood toeto toe in
battle on the front lines with the
revolutionary guards in the 1980s in the
war uh with uh between Iran and Iraq and
frontline fighter. This is not somebody
who's who's uh you know off in a
nightclub while everybody else is doing
the fighting. This is a guy who was
right there with the revolutionary
guards. So he uh was not actually that
much of a cleric. He doesn't have a much
of a religious standing here the way his
father did. So what happened is instead
of the uh softies so to speak um coming
in to power, what happened is you took
the old supreme leader off and you
elevated the revolutionary guard.
>> We also killed 20 other people who could
have filled the position. Right.
>> Who were the softies,
>> right?
>> Right. So was it? No, it was actually
Israel.
>> So this is the second time. So Israel is
the one who started the bombing on the
morning of February 28 when it started
and they told us what they were going to
do. They told Trump who they were going
to kill and uh Trump himself has told us
that they killed the supreme leader and
the leader was meeting with these 20
people. That's how they knew the timing
of of why they wanted to strike. Then
they knew the meeting was going to occur
at a certain time.
and they wanted to get all 20.
>> Why do you think the new supreme leader
of Iran is more dangerous than the
previous one?
>> Oh, for what I'm saying, he's coming
from the military essentially. He's he's
not a coming from the clerical route,
even though he's the son of a cleric and
has some lower status as a cleric. He is
he's a frontline
uh revolutionary fighter who's put his
life on the line. And then second and
then in addition to that the bombs kill
his father, the bombs kill his wife, the
bomb kill some of his children uh here.
So uh the bombs hurt him. He was wounded
in the bombing as well. So uh he
survived obviously. Um but you have a
situation where the uh this new supreme
leader just has layer after layer of
reasons to want uh uh to first of all
not make concessions and and want
payback for what has happened. So the
idea that that this was going to weaken
the regime, it just hasn't happened. Um
what you've got was a stronger, more
aggressive single leader. But even
broader than that, Jack, when you study
these cases of bombing against regimes,
which I've done for decades, uh, in
detail, what you see is that
the politics never works out the way the
bombing state thinks it's going to work
out. Bombing state is always got some
story they tell themselves. And this is
going on since, you know, for hundred
years, even with dumb bombs. uh the some
story they tell themselves about how
well you're going to attack this regime
and when you attack the regime it's
going to soften it and the new leaders
will become more pliable and do what you
want them to do. This just never works
out that way because what happens inside
of the uh the group, this collectivity
here is there's once you uh kill the
current leader, there's a group around
and they're vying for authority. They're
vying to be the leader. Uh if they don't
want to be the leader, they have an easy
thing. They can just go run away. But
the group around here, they want to be
the next leader. Well, in order to be
the next leader, you're you're never
going to find this group rally around
somebody who says, "Oh, hey, guess what?
I got a great idea. Let's go and
surrender and turn our whole futures
over to the guy who just killed our
previous boss." That just doesn't
happen. Now, if somebody were to make
that suggestion, there's every reason to
expect they'll get a bullet in the back
of the head at the meeting. you you just
you're you're this is uh not an
environment uh where they're looking for
someone to surrender and carry the
surrender papers. They're looking for
they're having meetings among themselves
to figure out who's got the plan to
fight back. Uh and that's why the new
leaders who come in are either uh just
as bad or they're even more aggressive
when you when you do go through these.
So you're saying when a country gets
attacked, a more radicalized like uh
aggressive leader goes into place for
political reasons. It's a set of
political dynamics, not personality
driven dynamics. It's even if you
thought they were soft ahead of time,
the people who come to the floor, even
among the most dovish here, are going to
be much more hardline. And it's for the
political reason I'm saying.
>> So what's the opposite of that? Like
what would a country or cabinet people
in power v for if say a leader launched
an attack on another country? Like would
would it be the opposite effect? Like
>> wait, say it one more time, Jack, so I
make sure I understand.
>> So you're saying that if a country gets
attacked, a more radicalized leader
appears. That's right. But what happens
um to a country when there's an election
coming up in that previous
>> that's when you tend to see things more
fractured when you have like the normal
churning of politics in a country
without the outside power doing the
attacking there are gaps between the
society and the regime and there clearly
was true in Iran um probably something
like 20% of the population of Iran
worked for the government literally got
a paid paycheck from the government.
They were the supporters. Um maybe
there's a few more supporters of the of
the government who weren't getting a
paycheck, but you could reasonably
imagine before the bombs falling that
80% of the public just didn't like their
government. Some maybe to the point of
even willing to risk dying to oppose it,
but um that the government only had
minority support. what we did when we
intervene and we have the foreign US uh
you know juggernaut. We're we're an 800
pound gorilla. We're a juggernaut coming
in here and we're not just uh uh putting
our thumb on a scale. We're literally
saying we're going to kill this leader
and we're choosing the next one that we
choose who the next leader is. Well,
once you um make it clear that it's uh
Washington who's running the country
now, that tends to unify. Whatever the
gap was between society and the regime
tends to condense. It tends to close
because even the most uh pro uh and
opposition movements to the government
don't want to become uh puppets for
America. That's that's uh traitor that's
being treasonous. That's being uh
anti-Iranian.
So you may not Another way to put it,
Jack, is um a lot of Democrats right now
uh do not like uh President Trump and
haven't liked him since he came down the
escalator 2015.
Uh, but that said, if Iran were to
assassinate President Trump, how many
Democrats are going to call on the
Iranian assassins to come to Time Square
and party with them? None. They're not
going to do that. In fact, they're going
to probably be some of the leaders of we
need revenge and fight back here if uh
if Trump is assassinated. uh and and so
this is uh this is the same this is the
dynamic that's true in in politics in in
all modern nation states. It's not uh
that there are some countries more
vulnerable to this than others. It's
literally the bombs change the politics
in the country and that's the mistake
that's made by governments over and
over. So governments read these pre-war
trends and as I'm saying it's quite
reasonable to say 80% of the public was
opposed to the Iranian regime. Pre-war
trend and they say no problem. I'm just
going to knock off that regime. That 80%
will love me for it. They'll do our
bidding. Never happens that way. Because
once you do once you the foreign
government doing the bombing, you change
the politics. that pre-war trend doesn't
matter anymore. It's gone. It's not that
it's you were misreading the pre-war
trend. It's you changed the game. It was
a gamecher
and it's a selfdefeating strategy. It's
literally a contradictory strategy which
is why for over a hundred years we have
zero cases of success. It has always
backfired and uh it's only a matter of
the degree of backfiring, but it's never
worked out positively.
>> I guess what I'm asking here is
domestically, how does that change like
our midterm and presidential elections?
>> Oh, you mean here?
>> Yeah. Yeah. Does that make it favorable
for the incumbent conservative
Republican party or does that make it
favorable for the Democrat?
>> Well, no. So right now
um in in the current trends what you're
seeing is uh Trump is clearly to blame
for starting the war inside of the
American public and that's why he's lost
he already lost the support of the
Democrats but he's lost support among
almost all the independents and even
probably about 15 or 20% of the
Republicans now are um saying he's doing
a bad job. Now, that doesn't necessarily
mean they're going to vote Democrat
because right now this is all being
judged based on the consequences of the
Iran war. When we get to the midterms,
you can absolutely and you already see
this and I I was already telling my
class to expect this. Uh what Trump is
going to do is is he is going as the
closer we get to the midterms, he's
going back to the social issues. He got
elected on social issues big time. uh
remember the immigrant issue uh the
trans issue he's going to remind
everybody why they voted for him in
droves over Kla Harris and he he
legitimately won in 2024. It wasn't a he
didn't uh hoodwink anybody. So that he's
he will undoubtedly come back to that
strategy and it's already occurring uh
here. So, so the uh what looks like a
gigantic title wave of um uh of support
for the Democrats here is probably more
of a mirage at the moment. Now, that
said, if the economy, as I'm saying, is
going to continue to go uh south here,
um this will work to his political
disadvantage. So, and we get into the
midterms here. Now, what you have, Jack,
is my nightmare scenario. This is
something I worried about several years
ago and it's where you have a gigantic
international crisis that's really uh
hurting America at home in addition to
the political crisis that we've been
facing for the last 5 years. For five
years we have had we've been in an era I
call the era of violent populism. This
is uh you've seen the rise of political
violence on the right. On the left,
you've seen uh January 6 on the right
during the George Floyd protest. Uh 5 to
7% of the George Floyd protests were
violent. Uh to this day, you can go into
downtown Chicago and you'll find um uh
Water Tower Place is still uh not open.
That's one of that was our our gi that's
where Oprah had her apartment at the
top. uh they're only now talking about
maybe bringing it back in 2028
here. So, so the consequences of all of
that violence here, uh which I'm saying
it was only 5 to 7% of the protests were
violent, but that's 600 protests were
violent because it was such a massive uh
uh uh situation. Well, that was on and
then we had um uh lower level of
violence of course the uh uh the campus
protests that happened after um a
October 7th uh here. So um that was
another wave of of this uh era of
violent populism. So we've had for 5
years now uh this rising political
violence uh lonewolf and collective
political violence. You've have the
rising normalization of political
violence. I I track this in these
national opinion surveys we do at my
center, the University of Chicago
project on security and threats uh here.
And so now what you're seeing in the
fall, these lines are crossing.
These lines are literally crossing and
they're happening not five years from
now. They're going to happen in these
midterms. So, I um uh think these
midterms and also probably 2028, what
we're coming to are the most dangerous
elections uh in our lifetimes. And my
lifetime is a lot longer than your
lifetime. So, I mean my lifetime uh
here. Uh this is really uh with with the
uh Iraq with the Iran war, you're
bringing these two things together in
ways we we just uh we haven't seen since
the 60s. The last time we had um this,
you know, hugely unpopular war uh and uh
this uh domestic chaos was the 1960s.
And it was it it that was also a string
of political assassinations and so
forth. And
>> do political assassinations typically
bode well for the incumbent party or the
opposition party? Well,
normally the assassinations in a we say
normally in a in a time not a violent
populism. So, we're in a specific era,
Jack. But if you think about uh the
assassinations that occur outside of
that, say 1981, Hinckley by the name of
Hinckley tries to assassinate Ronald
Reagan. Well, that's pretty clearly a
oneoff. There's not there. This was a
good period of time after the 1960s. So,
it's it's essentially an isolated event.
Um, and what it does is it actually
brought a lot of sympathy for Reagan in
the short term. Uh, didn't really last a
long time politically because nothing if
if it's just a oneoff event. Uh, nothing
really lasts uh very long in our
country. Politics just on too many big
things here. So, uh it normally
politically doesn't really matter. it
will matter for a few days um when
they're oneoff events.
>> I guess when you think of JFK and like
the uh Lyndon B Johnson was brought on
>> JFK was in um uh 63. So this is the
early part of the the 60s era violent
populism really gets going a few years
later. So when JFK is assassinated, it's
essentially a one-off from as people
felt it at the time. Now in hindsight
you can see it as part of maybe a
connected but it's too early in the
process to be viewed as part of an era
or a hinge event of a new era. The truth
is it was a period of of pretty great
sympathy across the country and it was
viewed again as a one-off an exceptional
event. Compare that to the assassination
of Martin Luther King. Uh this happens
in um April uh early April 1968.
This is happening after a whole string
of violence had happened in our country.
You have riots in cities. You have
anti-war violence going on. So So the
second half of the 1960s is not like the
first half of the 1960s. The second half
of the 1960s is essentially an era of
violent popular. I have a whole chapter
on this in my the book I have coming out
um in in a few months here. It's uh it's
called Our own Worst Enemies uh uh here.
Um anyway, um and what you uh what you
see there is a completely different set
of reactions. So when Martin Luther King
is assassinated uh in Chicago, which is
500 miles away from King where King was
assassinated, uh you have a whole
two-mile strip of uh downtown Chicago
literally burned to the ground.
Literally burned to the ground. It was
two uh miles of a smoking ruin. Uh, and
that was because of the reaction to
Martin Luther King's assassination. Uh,
well, you didn't see anything like that
with uh JFK. You see, it was a it was if
anything there was a reaction, it was
positive. Um, it wasn't uh because JFK
was a Democrat. Uh, here it's just
because we were in an era where uh
public support for political violence
hadn't yet uh occurred. It will occur a
few years later in the 60s. And that
changes everything. Once you have tens
of millions of Americans
uh support political violence for their
own political goals, that changes
everything about political violence.
It's It's not just about militia groups
anymore. It's not just about um um it's
not just about a lone wolf. Uh the lone
wolf has um an enormous incentive to
commit violence once there's tens of
millions who he can look to as uh people
who will support him, endorse him. Today
on top of the tens of millions, we have
social media where you can see almost
instantly the support for political
violence. uh um uh it just happens and
that motivates the wouldbe lone ass lone
uh lone wolves to do even more.
>> How did the pandemic affect political
violence in the US?
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How did the pandemic affect political
violence in the US?
>> So, this is when I first started to
worry about political violence in the
US. It was actually with the pandemic.
Um so the pandemic just to remind
everybody was uh starts in in small ways
in late January 2020, early February,
but the lockdown happens in the middle
of March right away. I wanted to know
what did the pandemic mean for political
violence? What did it cuz I study
violence. That's what I do. What does it
mean for war? Were we going to go to war
against China for instance? Because this
was the China virus, remember? So, did
that mean we're about to launch invasion
of China? I mean, what did all this
mean? You see what I mean? So, um, uh, I
teach courses on strategy. You've heard
us discuss it here. So, I already when
we did the lockdown, I decided, okay,
middle middle of, uh, uh, a couple weeks
in, I'll give a lecture. So, I'll spend
time reading all the books. All the a
lot of professors are doing this. I read
a book that very few other professors
probably would have read because a lot
of them would have gotten out the
histories of epidemics, pandemics and so
forth. I did that too. But I also read
another book. It was by William McNeel,
a historian called Plagues and Peoples.
And this was a book that was about the
impact of disease on war. And it stops
in the uh 19th century. It doesn't even
get to World War I in the Spanish flu.
So, not coming up on CNN. No one's
talking about this book. Okay. But this
is the book. Okay. Now, the fact it
doesn't deal with the Spanish flu and
dot dot dot that no, this is dealing
with the actual problem here, not just
the narrowness of a virus. It's and and
what it shows in this book is that the
consequences of mass like pandemics, the
black plague was a big one. Um is
political fragmentation of the first
order. When the what happens is when you
have disease
um it makes people individuals fearful
of being near each other. So we had the
six-foot distance, right? Well, this was
also having not just social effects but
political effects. It makes us more
likely to see each other as rivals, as
enemies. And that's what McNeel was
tracking in plagues and people. So, what
this told me is this is beyond what we
call we already had what we called
political polarization. Uh that's where
you just have extreme disagreement on
policy. That's not what McNeel is
tracking. what he's showing in this
little 250 page book again not even
dealing with the Spanish flu which is
the closest corona virus event that we
had uh here is there's going to there
there is political fragmentation which
is far more extreme
>> can you define fragmentation really
quick as opposed to bifurcation and
polarization
>> yeah what what what he is describing is
a situation where you have a community
and there is a community that is uh
under threat threat here. Normally when
a community comes under threat, say by
an external actor like another country,
uh it will bring that community together
and that's what I just described with
the bombing that's happening and
bringing the Iran society and its regime
closer together. It makes it more
cohesive and that's been true for um
lots of wars, lots of conflicts. Um 9/11
brought a lot of Americans closer
together. uh made us more warlike too.
That's how we started two forever wars.
But we did this together. Uh 70% of the
public supported those forever wars.
This was not a case of big bifurcation
between uh polarization between uh
Republicans and Democrats on how to
respond to 9/11. what McNeel was showing
which you don't see in normal
international politics because most
international politics is about great
power wars or states fighting wars which
bring the societies closer together.
This was different. What he was showing
is there's a threat but it's not a
threat from an outside country. It's a
threat of a disease and what the disease
the threat that the disease poses to
every person is every person. Every
person is the threat to every other
person. Uh so uh just to remind
everybody what it was like during the
pandemic when you would go walking you
would stay on the other side of the
street of people. the most you would do
is you wouldn't go and actually talk to
them and even get within six feet of
them uh because we were told we could
kill each other essentially. So the
biggest threat uh to other people to to
to each person was the other person not
a foreign country the other person. So
this uh told me there was uh I didn't
know how it was going to unfold but
there was a chance we were going to have
uh serious political violence in the
United States. So I started to revector
my research teams which I had been
having them do work on international
terrorism. I said you know we've got to
do some historical studies here on
domestic political violence. Now, we had
known about this some, but we we started
to do some more serious studies, and
this was in April of 2020. This is
before um any violence had happened. And
sure enough, the George Floyd video came
out that created a lot of peaceful
protest, but it created a lot of
violence as well, just as McNeel would
have, you know, said was going to
happen. Um, and that then set me off on
tracking uh with the research team um in
the top 100 American cities the protests
and the violence every day in those top
100 cities. So that's how I got into the
issue of studying American political
violence in the first place. If there
was a pandemic tomorrow,
what would be the effect with everything
going on now? Well, it would it would
fragment us again. So, we have this uh
this uh uh cruise ship right now.
There's a there's a virus that's
starting out there and it's reminding
everybody of how this thing started uh
with the corona virus uh here. So, if it
if it were to unfold, I think what you
would see is for the first few months um
you would see that um just as happened
in the spring of 2020, probably not much
more violence. In fact, you might even
have a uh the initial low of violence.
But then um just as we saw with the uh
the corona virus, that fear that that
that fear induced telling us that every
person we meet could be uh the you know
our death sentence. That is then what
can lay the groundwork here for reacting
much more violently to events than we
would imagine.
>> It's really the only thing that can
divide every individual from each other.
>> That's right. Disease is the only thing
that can divide it. And it's insidious.
I'm saying because uh and this is true
with political violence in general is
what's insidious about political
violence. It's not happening on a
schedule that's linear. You get lols.
you get um there's a famous statement by
people that have been in combat um uh
which is uh because in say Vietnam or in
Iraq they were in these tours that were
one year long which is uh what it's like
to be in combat are weeks of boredom
punctuated by seconds of absolute
terror.
So, so it's a it's a punctuated problem.
And the fact that you have this
punctuated crisis of terror with the
violence and then you have weeks or
months of a lull, well, no, that doesn't
mean the problem's over. It it just
means that that this this type of
phenomenon is not a linear phenomenon.
>> Let me ask you this. If you wanted to
end the American Empire, you might close
the straight of Hormuse.
You might launch a pandemic. What else
would seal the deal on? Well, if you
launch the pandemic, um it's not
guaranteed. It did not uh morph into uh
violence against China. But if you if
you look at the uh public opinion data,
you'll see that it predates the
pandemic, but it it gets more aggressive
during the pandemic. Uh this
anti-Chinese set of attitudes starts to
become much much more serious. Uh now we
don't end up having that vetored into a
war against China or military conflict
against China. Thank God, you know, we
don't. That's the last thing I want to
see happen. Um, but I think that we we
should be careful.
>> Did it make China stronger?
>> Well, it does over time. I was in China
in June for uh two weeks when we were
bombing Foraux. I was in China visiting
its advanced industries and uh they um
had a plan that predated the pandemic.
You could say the pandemic made them
stronger. But the truth is what happened
is when she came in the current
president of China, when he came in uh
in 2013, he started a process where by
2015 he had a a strategy called digital
China. And they showed me these plans uh
for what this looked like. Um and uh
China goes by these five-year plans. So
they had the five-year plan from 2015 to
20, the next one, the next. And so I got
uh not just these tours of the advanced
industries, the shop floors, the robots
and so forth, but I got more of the
background of what what's the strategy?
What are the plans? Where's all this
come from? And what happened with China
is she comes in and he comes in with
this idea of digital China. Then Trump
came in and slapped some tariffs on
China, which then reveeded or or sort of
shaped some of these early plans of shei
to have China's growth plan be much more
independent of America. So if you're
going to really um uh zoom ahead, uh the
last thing you're going to want to do is
let your uh your plans be hostage to
your rival. And once Trump came in, it
became very clear that Trump was going
to try to disrupt the plan. So the
Chinese started right away, early in
this process to develop plans for a
digital China uh that were going to be
much more impervious to uh say tariffs
uh uh loss of market in the United
States. And that's why they don't even
sell their their great um electric
vehicles. They have the best electric
vehicles in the world are made in China.
I don't mean that they uh have caught up
to the best in the world. They're the
whole next level beyond Tesla. And I
know cuz I've been there. I've been in
them. And the BYD electric vehicles,
their SUVs, the uh where you want to sit
is in the back seat. When you're in the
my RAV 4, you don't really want to sit
in the back of the RAV 4. That's where
the kids are supposed to sit or your
passengers are supposed to sit. But when
you're in the BYD SUV, the back has
turned into a cabin that looks like
first class cabins in aircraft where the
seats lay absolutely flat and you can't
get this cool stuff. That is fascinating
and I think it it ties to some other
ideas. I do want to close the gap though
on the question of what could really
hurt America aside from the straight of
hormuse a potential a pandemic right now
might really hurt us but what else would
be like a third thing? Well, I think
that the the difference between hormuz
and a pandemic is that um America
weathered the uh corona virus pandemic
uh the co 19 pandemic better than any
other country on the planet cuz we're
the richest country. The problem with
the straight of hormones is this is a
chronic problem that can be with us for
20 years. for the rest of the world to
make up the loss of 20% of the world's
energy, oil and gas. Uh that is a
five-year problem at minimum just to
make a serious dent because you need to
there are um certain oil fields. There's
offshore drilling. There's different uh
approaches here to try to make up for
that loss of energy. All of them are
very expensive.
All of them require um not just a few
months but many years of development and
what that means is that it's going to
take some time before the companies
would even go down that road because if
I need to be uh uh assured that I'm
going to get my I'm going to it's going
to take me a a five-year investment in
offshore drilling um to get serious uh
uh oil out of
Um, and then I need to be assured I'm
going to make money for another 5 years
after that. What's in it for me as a
company to invest all this money up
front, have somehow Iran just reopen the
the straight or something happened and
then I've lost all my investment. No,
no, no, no, no. This is a this is where
the the uh this idea that we're just
going to do our own drilling or drill
baby drill our way out of this much more
difficult because uh Iran if Iran is
smart it's going to and you notice how
smart they've been so far Iran is going
to play the game of keeping the oil
price right where they most sweet spot
where they're making a lot of money and
they're not um uh uh creating so much
trouble that this is going to
incentivize all those companies to fix
the problem. So, they're going to want
to string this out. Jack, this play is
not a forever play, but 10 or 15 years
is a long time in international
politics. It it's uh it's a long time to
hurt the American economy. Uh you can
have crises where you go through and you
wreck the American economy. We have a
recession. We're we're I'm not an
economist, but I I think you can already
see the tea leaves are almost surely
going to end up in in a in a recessions
here starting in the fall. But anyway,
you end up uh playing the game from
Iran's perspective, you can you can try
to modulate this and you can modulate it
so that um uh just like OPEC was
modulating the price of oil, now Iran
has the incentive to modulate the price
of oil. And part of that is to melt as
much as you can out of the system. Part
of it is you want to damage your uh
political rivals political system uh so
they don't attack you. Uh and part of it
is you don't want those oil companies um
to be able to start thinking they can
take these five-year investments that'll
put you out of business. So these are
all the predictable futures that that
I'm sure are being uh you know front and
center as they're thinking about what to
do with their new power. So I don't
think that if you layer up the pandemic
here that at least the one that we just
experienced onto this I don't think it's
quite as bad as uh hormones. I think the
having Iran control Hormos, they're
going to become a uh I call it now
emerging because this will take a year
or two. The emerging fourth center of
world power. What that means is um they
will control the fate of the economies
of many countries in the world. That's
power number one. They control the fate
of many countries in the world. uh
economically u 20 to 30% of um the UAE,
Saudi Arabia's uh economy is all hinging
on uh Iran right now. Same Japan's
economy very much uh hinging on on uh on
this. Uh and then over time there's a
very good chance um that we're going to
have to uh give them money. Uh this is
what the deal was talking what what what
it's going to look like Jack into the
future which is um Iran's going to get
to sell its oil uh and then it's going
to get to charge the tolls uh or if we
don't do that we're going to have to
take it back physically uh here with war
uh with probably ground war. So these
are the real choices that we have. And
then the third part of Iran gaining
world power is um I think any analyst
who if you ask them just um straight up
uh what are the odds that Iran will have
a working nuclear weapon say 18 months
from now uh just based on the physical
possibilities of it it's over 90%. This
is just the reality of the situation.
And if we if in fact Iran gave up all of
its enriched uranium, shipped it all out
of the country, they have gigantic
uranium ore mines in the country itself.
They're not shipping in uranium ore.
They would still be about a year away
from working nuclear weapons. So there
the problem here is we're we're uh they
have all the knowhow, the materials,
they're just right there. uh they have
now deep underground caverns where they
can uh uh they can manufacture things.
They don't need the facilities we just
destroyed to do this. And um if you look
at all those layers, what you see is
this is this is about as as much as you
could imagine uh hurting America as if
you had said, "Well, let's just design
the absolute worst."
the pandemic I think will will turn out
to be um the lesser of the two because
it it's something to be over.
>> Is there a third thing that would do it?
>> Well, if we come apart as a country,
yes. The bigger thing here, Jack, is
>> So, you think those two events alone
will lead to this political uh
compartmentalization? these nightmare
scenario that I'm describing here um
where we're bringing these two streams
of problem the international crisis of
Iran now we have the uh age of violent
populism and they're coming together
this is leading to some really severe
strain um because you we know that um
poverty is a major cause of potential
violence now it doesn't always lead to
violence um but we know That's a that's
a problem. So if we see the uh poorest
of the poor among us getting poorer and
that's happening on both sides of the
aisle, uh it's not going to pick
parties. Um uh that that's adding to the
age of violent populism already.
>> Does the data you have suggest that
there's one group or one common enemy uh
or two main groups, three main groups
that people are going to be particularly
violent toward?
>> Um they're going to be violent toward
each other. our own worst enemies. So,
so the what you are seeing is that in
the United States we're going through a
set of social changes.
These social changes are very
profound.
We're transitioning from a white
majority democracy to a white minority
democracy for the first time in our
history. That is happening across the
country. That's a huge uh change never
happened in 250 years when you have
gigantic demographic changes in
countries. This is a common uh uh cause
of radicalized politics, a common cause
of that radicalized politics becoming
violent politics. The change because
when you have demographic change, it is
not agnostic politically. um our parties
do not have the same percentages of
white and minority in them. So that
means as the uh balance of whites and
minorities in the country shift, so to
political power, so too does the
possibility that political power will
not come back to one party. So the
permanent exclusion of one party from
political power is on the horizon. Well,
that that hasn't really been a problem
for a while. we've had um essentially
oscillation between Republican and
Democratic administrations. Um but if
you are if you once you start to see the
relationship between the demographics
uh and political parties and then the
shifts you can start to see that it's
it's not um at all a uh uh illusion to
uh see that as the white uh minority
population occurs, whites become a
minority, uh Republicans may never win
another election. uh now that will take
time to have happen but it is that fear
of political exclusion which often
pushes people to political violence in
this uh generation I call the tipping
point generation where the numbers show
that this demographic change I'm talking
about starts really in the 1970s but
we're at the tipping point 20 years
where this will really happen in the
next 20 years and that's why immigration
has been not just a policy issue like it
was under Obama, but a front and center
view issue of existential politics that
we haven't seen under Obama or in the
years before. It's because it really is
mattering to the future of of political
power in ways that hadn't happened
before. We're on a the balance here is
shifting now and it's a it's it's
shifting in ways which um which may end
up becoming permanent. Are you more
worried about people on the left or
people on the right becoming radical?
>> I'm worried about both. Yeah, I'm
worried about both. And what's happening
is the demographic change, this tipping
point generation corresponds to the rise
of Donald Trump on the right. It
corresponds to why his uh signature
issue is immigration. Um and uh why then
it's not just been about immigration,
it's been about changing voting rules
and changing uh who counts as a citizen
uh here because it's about the right
trying not everybody in the right. I
want to also be clear it's not I'm
painting with a broad brush where in our
data it's a subset of the right. Uh they
want to stop the transition and reverse
it if they could. Well, that energy to
stop the transition and reverse it is
what's creating a counter reaction on
the left. So, the left is seeing the uh
the trend and it doesn't need violence.
It's going to be the big winner here.
Especially the progressive liberal idea
of America that's coming into being. So,
the progressive liberal side of the
house, they they just really don't need
violence to ultimately um carry this
forward unless
the other side, the right, stops it.
Now, you have real energy that's very,
very hostile to the right. And that's
what you're seeing in our country. So,
that's why you're seeing political
violence rise on both the left and the
right almost at the same time. Uh it's
because this change is occurring. It's
occurring in the country and um uh
Donald Trump is both a cause and a
symptom of all of this. It's it's not
that if Trump went away tomorrow uh all
the problems would be fixed because the
demographic change is still going to
happen. There's going to be others and
you see this with uh uh JD Vance's
approach to what counts as being an
American. Uh JD Vance went to Europe a
year ago to explain to the Western
Europeans um that they're letting too
much immigration come in. They're
changing what it means to be European.
And so he wants to have more right-wing
governments take over from the leftwing
government. So So he's basically
exporting the Trump revolution to
Europe. Um here, but it's on the
demographics as I'm explaining. And
Marco Rubio is uh giving very similar
speeches, not as quite as aggressive as
JD Vance where he's talking about
Western civilization. And what is
Western civilization? It's very much a
white civilization. So you end up with
more and more of the uh leadershing
around this uh this goal to stop the
demographic shift. That's what's
underneath ICE and the deportations. And
then on the left, they see this coming
and they've been seeing it even before
the the uh the actual policies occur
because they can see the talk. They they
see it coming and they're very sensitive
to this. So that's why you you have it
happening on their side as well. So
you're seeing both sides here um of tens
of millions of uh people in the public
support violence uh for their goals. Um,
and that doesn't mean that tens of
millions will take up arms or something
like that, but it does mean that when
violence happens,
um, they tend to excuse it on their
side. They tend to look the other way.
Uh, when Trump was just, we had the
third assassination attempt on Trump.
What was one of the big storylines on
social media? It was all fake. Wasn't
real. It was all fake. Well, the problem
is the guy had shotgun and the guy shot
people and then there's real bullets
flying. So, uh, this very unlikely to be
anything. This is not a faked event. The
claim that everything is fake is just
another way to say that, uh, we're not
going to worry about that. That's just
not going to be something we're going to
we're going to care much about or you're
accepted.
>> Why do you think Americans didn't care
when Trump got shot the third time?
What's very likely here that what you
see on social media and what we've seen
in our past surveys uh is uh that what
you see on social media does reflect
actual uh attitudes in a um uh
representative survey of Americans. So
with the Manion uh shooting of the
healthcare CEO for instance, we saw this
in the surveys uh that uh
>> Do you have a stat line on that? I'm
actually really curious about that one.
like what's the correlation between
social media perceived opinion and then
actual survey data.
>> We never did that. Um I we well maybe
we'll do this in the future Jack. So
it's I I'm telling you just from having
um uh SP we spend so much time with the
uh the actual surveys uh because that is
what gives us the uh pool of data that
allow us to see why the support for
political violence is what it is. we can
correlate risk factors. So, for example,
um if you are uh upset about uh white
decline that I'm describing, um you can
see how much does that matter to your
support for political violence uh to
keep Trump in office or to punish or to
use force against Democrats or if you're
uh want uh if your view is that um uh
America is a racist country and always
has been, how much does that correspond
respond to your view that uh political
violence to uh remove Trump from the
presidency is acceptable. So what we
when we look inside the surveys, we're
using highly uh reliable data not just
to track the portion of Americans
supporting political violence, but we
want to know more about the likely
reasons.
And we can um uh we can see some good
risk factors they're called of that and
they correspond quite a bit to these
demographic changes.
>> What's the most shocking piece of data
you have? I have
>> the most shocking for sure is the raw
number. So if the absolute shocking data
is not even the reason, it's literally
the raw number. Jack, January 2026
survey. That's the one that we did right
at the end of the month there. Uh we
found that uh 21% of American adults uh
that equates to 40 million American
adults uh believe the use of force is
justified to remove Trump from the
presidency.
uh we've done other deeper uh surveys
focus groups to know what does that
phrase use of force justified means half
of the people who you it's 55% actually
by mean by that phrase assassinating him
with guns killing him uh so this doesn't
use of force does not mean yelling at
him so that at a minimum is something
like 25 million American adults
That's just on the left. That's on the
one side. Okay. So then we have
>> So those are Democrats or like
>> almost all a lot of some of them are um
uh well almost all like 75% of those are
Democrats, but then you get a lot of
independents cuz it's a independent here
can go both ways. Uh and then you will
pick up some Republicans.
>> What percentage of Republicans supported
uh assassinating Trump to remove him
from office?
>> It would be something like 5 to 8%
something like that. Uh but it's a um
these would be the group of people who
are uh the Republicans who are very
angry that Trump is distorting their
party. They're angry the a lot of
Republicans were embracing Hispanics. By
the way, um this was the Jeb Bush
Republican that this was who who Trump
beat in 2015. When Trump came down the
escalator in 2015, uh, he was out of
sync with the Republican party. The
Republican party was a party.
>> And you mean in the primaries, right?
>> I mean in the primaries. That's what he
was doing in the primaries. What Trump
was doing in the primaries wasn't just
beating individual candidates. He was
changing the policy and ideological
positions of the Republican party. Uh
Jeb Bush uh was the sort of the nominal
frontr runner and um uh he was uh
married to his his wife's Hispanic. Uh
for years uh the Republican party has
seen this demographic change coming and
Jeb Bush was the leader of well the way
you move forward is you embrace the uh
Hispanic side um and you especially do
it with religion. So just to be clear uh
and there is still uh Trump does does
take a little bit of advantage of that.
Uh but the truth is what Trump was doing
was was uh replacing the Jeb Bush part
part of the uh Republican party. Um and
now um the Jeb Bush part is a much
smaller part. Nikki Haley probably still
represents that that part of it. Um but
you are you are just getting a smaller
portion of that. Now uh the more
dominant part is that uh um uh is the
part of the Republican party that wants
uh to uh deport millions of immigrants.
So that's not where Jeb Bush was going.
He was going more down the path of uh of
uh citizenship over time, want to get
rid of the worst of the worst. But this
is what Trump did. So now on the left or
on the Trump side today in our January
poll, 16% of Americans support um the
use of force by uh the use of the
military by Trump to suppress Democratic
protesters.
Uh that's that's a a question wording
that we've come to as our best measure
of core support for political violence
on the right. And um that's what you saw
here play out with the Operation Midway
Blitz in Chicago. Uh also in Metro Blitz
in Minneapolis where for the country as
a whole uh I don't just mean what
happened in the local parts of the city.
I'm talking about for the the country as
a whole massive support for ICE even as
they were uh killing Good and Py in uh
uh on the videos uh here. So, it's it's
this wasn't just like polarization in
the normal sense where we're divided
about what a policy should be. We're
literally
um uh seeing violent populism and action
where there's uh support for ICE to keep
doing its actions on the right even as
you're getting the killing of American
citizens. What number would you have to
see from your polling to believe that we
are currently in a civil war?
>> We're currently somewhere around 15 to
20% and we need to double that number
essentially to get to civil war
territory.
>> And that number is people that support.
>> Yep. It's just supporters. It's just
supporters. It's not the when you when
you um it's not just about that number
alone, Jack. So that you asked me that
number directly and I gave you that, but
that makes it sound like that's the one
and only
single feature that you need. What you
also um are looking for with uh with
civil war is where you have the
beginnings of true divided sovereignty.
Uh what divided sovereignty starts to
look like is when um uh say uh one state
say California since you're from
California would stop paying uh income
taxes to the federal government. So
Gavin Newsome last summer uh in June
when when ICE went into LA in June for a
hot second he talked about um not
sending the money from California to the
federal government that is supposed to
go. Then he took it back because once
you start to go down that road, now
you're really talking about true um
uh divided sovereignty, separation, and
those tend to be these precursors to
civil wars uh here even more so than
just the popular support alone. So that
it's not just the popular support, but
you're starting to truly fragment the
body politic in ways that you can start
to have organized violence. So what a
civil war is, that's different than
violent populism is where with a civil
war, a true civil war, you have large
organizations, whether it's large armies
or whether it's large terrorist groups
that are organized for the purpose of
violence. Um, in the 1960s we got uh
some small little bits of this with the
weather um underground, the weatherman,
the weather underground. These were just
25 people, you know, maybe a little bit
larger than that. Very small. Nothing of
the size of hundreds of thousands of
people uh here or even tens of thousands
of people organized for violence. Uh so
it's not that we haven't seen the
beginnings of what we would call a
domestic terrorist group before and and
we saw that in the '60s, but the fact is
to get a true civil war um you're you
don't necessarily need uh two armies
toeto toe like you saw with uh the uh US
civil war in 1860. I think it's a
mistake to think we're heading to civil
war because civil war is raising the uh
uh the expectations of what this is
going to look like uh in a way that is
number one not likely to happen and
number two it's like chicken little
saying the sky is falling. You you keep
telling people their problem is we're
right around the corner to civil war. It
doesn't happen. And so what you're
really doing is creating a world in
which uh the real problem of violent
populism, this middle ground, can grow
and grow. And that's already pretty bad.
January 6 are pretty bad. Um uh
different versions of that that are even
more aggressive where they actually take
control of different parts of the
government. That's pretty bad. Well,
what I'm doing in this work, Jack, is
I'm deliberately trying to develop a
concept called violent populism. I'm
trying to explain there's a middle
ground here. It's not just nasty
politics and it's not civil war. Uh it's
uh I call it violent populism. It's
where you have this normalization of
political violence and these patterns of
collective violence that keep happening
and these patterns of lone wolf violence
that keep happening. And this is a
distinct animal. It happened in our
country before in the 1960s. It happened
in the early 20s from 1920 to 25.
There's a period there with the rise of
the second KKK. So in the 20s um this
was a mostly right-wing phenomenon. in
the 60s was mostly left-wing. Today,
what's especially distinctive about our
era of violent populism, the third one,
uh is that it's coming on both the right
and left. And that is what's very
distinct. It's not just we have a
distinct
>> are we already in that era or we just
>> Yeah, we crossed the Rubicon here with
with So in um
uh I I believe that um you saw the brink
really change last summer in the summer
of 2025. So we had the political
assassinations in Minnesota. Few months
later we had the um Charlie Kirk
assassination. Then we had um the
political violence by the state by ICE
in um operation in Chicago and in
Minneapolis. And the one I was really
concerned about was um you would get the
uh the use of uh political violence uh
essentially the ICE operations
uh because um this is a another level
here and it's what's going to cause this
once you you escalate a partisan
issue of deportation and you say well
the reason we can do it is because our
president one, which means you're just
going to ram it through because you have
the legal authority to do it. That
doesn't mean you have the political
legitimacy in the country to do it. And
and that is what is uh causing the
fracturing of legitimacy in our country.
So we're in an era I'm I'm I'm saying
it's this era of violent populism now is
is we're in the stage of fractured
legitimacy. Do you believe the uh
government is using violence in a
legitimate way? Well, once you don't
accept once you you fund once large
parts of our uh body politic don't
accept that the federal government is
using violence uh for the common good uh
to really just reduce criminals or to
really just uh enforce public safety.
Once that is an asymmetric
um uh view, legitimacy is broken. And
that's what happened with um uh ICE and
the fracturing of legitimacy. It's
literally causing the uh it's an
escalation within an era of violent
populism because what's uh yes,
President Trump is is he he is the
president. He has the legal power to do
many things. But power is not the same
as legitimacy.
Legitimacy is that idea that we'll go
along with it because we fundamentally
believe it's the right thing.
>> Can I ask a dumb question? So, how did
uh Charlie Kirk's assassination
affect people's support for political
violence versus like how does I don't
know like how do you think something
like playing Call of Duty affects
someone's support for political
violence?
>> Yeah. Well, there are different parts of
the pipeline. So when you say playing
Call of Duty, what you're talking about
is some behavior that somebody's engaged
in for months or years and whether or
not that has uh sort of uh impacted
their brain in ways that they're just
numb to um
actual violence that's occurred in the
world. When we first started to do our
surveys, um we wanted to test that by
asking how much time a day do you spend
on social media where uh we don't mean
like so I'm not counting the hours we've
had in our podcast now is I'm on social
media although it's my app is open the X
is open that doesn't count. I mean how
much time would you spend scrolling on
social media? Uh, and what we found is
that as you might expect, um, if you
spend, um, eight hours or more a day
scrolling, you are more likely to
support political violence. But we also
found because we're doing nationally
representative surveys, we can see the
proportion of the public that fits that
bill. We also found that is only uh uh
true that that pattern of behavior is
only true for five 7% of the population
maybe 10% at most um that you don't have
>> is there a specific demographic that's
true within
>> uh it's younger yeah it is younger but
it's not only I mean
>> do you think people answer honestly
about how often they scroll
>> yeah so we um we haven't stress tested
that question but what we did is We um
started to do this work in the spring of
2021. Um we um I told you the origins of
how I got into this whole thing and then
the George Floyd protest and then we had
January 6th. So after January 6th,
that's when I became persuaded there was
something that was likely a mass
phenomenon because these these are too
big. It's and it's also happening on
both the right and the left. Uh not to
the same degree. I'm not painting an
equivalence, but you're seeing things
that are just undeniable. Uh, so what I
did was I started to meet with um David
Axelrods. He is a black belt at trying
to understand political attitude. Now,
he's doing it for um trying to judge
who's going to win a an election. I'm
focusing on support for political
violence. So, it's not quite the same
thing. But nonetheless, um uh he's the
one who just immediately told me that
there's simply no point in, uh you
really have to understand that if you
don't do a a nationally representative
survey, you're just not going to get
good enough information. And um and
that's probably why you see a lot of bad
political polls because they're not
really paying the money to have them
really they're they're sort of um uh you
know sort of papering over. They they
say they're more representative than
they really are. The true probability
samples are just expensive.
>> Some polls are just propaganda used as
media tools and some polls are actual
data. You know,
>> actual data and the the more you want
actual data, the more expensive it is.
The bottom line here is that uh social
media is like pouring gasoline on the
fire, but it's probably not the fire
itself. Uh and this is why when we
deplatformed Trump, it didn't matter.
Okay? So, we took away his social media,
it didn't matter. Uh took away Tucker
Carlson, it didn't matter. Um and
there's an audience there that what's
there's there's um uh they are providing
supply to a demand and that demand is
coming from the social change I'm
telling you and so they are both a
symptom and a cause um and I got into
big uh debates with certain people about
this in say 2022 because my data this
data was showing that social media idea
was an accelerant. It wasn't the heart
of the matter. But people didn't want to
hear that. They wanted to hear we
platform Trump here. We do this and we
do that. We're going to stop this
problem in its tracks. Well, I went
toe-to-toe with those folks. They got
their way. They chose to ignore what I
was saying. And then they basically came
back later because what happened was
their way didn't work out as they
thought it would. And I had the explan
mine was a more coherent explanation for
what was going on.
>> I'm actually really fascinated in that.
But I do I want to tie it back to the
radicalization we're seeing in Iran. So
on day one of this war, one of our
missiles hit a girl's primary school in
Manab, Iran.
>> Mhm.
>> 170 people died. Most of them children.
>> It's actually multiple tomahawks hit.
There's not just one, multiple.
>> Was it three?
>> Three. So, three or it's either three or
four, but it's certainly multiple. So,
you have two waves. First wave, they uh
the tomahawk first wave hit the school
area and that caused the girls to go
into their prayer room. The second one
burned them to death in the per in the
prayer room. There might have been
others that got close as well, but this
certainly the second wave is the one
that Tomahawk I think that did the real.
How many of those girls brothers are
going to grow up to kill Americans?
>> Before uh working on American political
violence, a big part of my life was
international terrorism, suicide
terrorism. And so looking at the
backgrounds of uh suicide bombers,
suicide attackers, suicide terrorists,
and we have thousands in our database
now. So we have the biographies, the
backgrounds of these and uh what you see
is that um a significant portion and
it's a little difficult to get too
definitive on this but something like uh
probably 20 uh or 25% of the suicide
bombers um and attackers that u that we
were able to track uh from uh the 1980s
through say 2010. uh here that period of
the forever the heart of the forever
wars uh here and then just before uh had
um uh friends, relatives, brothers um um
uh sisters killed uh aunts uh uh
fathers, mothers killed in um the
conflicts. So you're saying 25% of
suicide terrorists have a direct family
connection to people who were killed in
the a family or or close friendship
connection of people who were killed in
the conflict.
>> So why do suicide bombers actually do
it?
>> The lion share the biggest uh proportion
don't have a um connection to a family
member. uh the biggest proportion um uh
are doing it because uh they are
themselves simply angry at the
atrocities even though they don't have
the family members there. Uh that's a a
large fraction. I would say probably
half is probably fits that bill. Um now
some of these would be people who are uh
seeing the atrocities like up close and
personal. So we have u you know there's
a um a range of say female suicide
bombers. Uh some of the early female
suicide bombers in um uh for uh Hamas
and Alaka were um ambulance drivers.
They were uh essentially people who were
the first responders who were picking up
the bodies of the people the Israelis
had killed. Uh now they themselves that
was not a direct relative but they're
they're really just directly seeing the
death for themselves and then they're
going down that road of uh wanting
revenge for that. They might also
getting uh um propaganda where you're
you're getting the the militant groups u
um the terrorist groups Hamas, Alaka,
they're funneling in the images here.
Um, and so that's a that's what I mean
by they're they're they're being
mobilized or being upset by the
atrocities themselves. Um, and this is
um,
>> so it's not just Islam.
>> Well, very few are mobilized because
they were brainwashed in madrasas in
Islam. So
>> very few like what what percentage?
>> Oh god, it's under 5% in our data. I
mean, we don't
>> because we're told like I was told
growing up 9/11 happened because of
radicalized terrorists under Islam and
your data suggests that that's
>> for example um the Hezbollah suicide
attackers in the 1980s uh 10% of them
are Christians. They're Christians just
to be clear. Okay. So the this is uh the
the kind of uh picture that you're
getting here with these top level
clickbait and which is happening before
clickbait by the way. So this is uh the
it's just simply not true. That's why my
work was uh
>> so controversial in 2005
>> and also called pathbreaking because
it's and it's actually providing the raw
underlying
uh verification. So, it's not a claim
that's verifiable. The Bush
administration, the Pentagon was
starting this and they wanted more
evidence, more information. Well, they
didn't just want reports with like
20page reports with summaries. Um, I was
sending whole volumes of the actual
uh data itself on which every judgment
was being made. I mean, uh, these were
three- ring binders here that would fill
this whole table. Uh, then I collected
all the martyr videos I could in the
world at a certain point. We subtitled
them. Uh, we translated them into
English so you could read the English at
the bottom. Uh, this was eyeopening for
the intelligence community because they
hadn't collected. We I send students to
buy things on black markets in Beirut
and Damascus and and so to really get to
the bottom of this was a massive
information collection campaign. And um
so this isn't just uh you know sort of
looking up stuff on a weekend and
handwavy collecting things from uh from
Google. This is the actual primary
source information itself. What was the
most surprising realization you had
after seeing the videos uh the documents
of hundreds of suicide bombers? Like
what was the one thing you noticed that
was
>> the the one thing I noticed was um they
they were such true believers in their
uh protection of their community. the
the hardest thing here. So I I come at
this um so I started um my work to go in
uh get a PhD in the 1980s. I was going
to go into the foreign service. I was
going to go become a a foreign service
officer and support American democracy
around the world. Uh so I'm a big
believer in America. I believe uh that
um we should have strong security, a
strong country, very wealthy country.
But what what was really very hard to
see is that our military presence
overseas, the actual military presence
uh even when they weren't um the troops
were not doing atrocities, this was the
number one motivator for the suicide
bombers because when you have military
troops of a foreign country on your
territory, this is just so alienating.
And and the way I used to describe it 20
years ago was was imagine we're here in
Chicago and the Bush administration
um tells us that we need a 100,000
Chinese troops to police the city of
Chicago and it's the Bush administration
telling us that uh how many Americans do
you think are going to pick up guns
after a few months, maybe not on day
one, uh and want to shoot those Chinese?
A lot. Okay. Um, and yeah, you can hear
that your government is behind that and
they've signed off on this on the dotted
line. Okay? But the fact of the matter
is you're just going to have all kinds
of reasons why those Chinese troops,
those 100,000 because that's we're
talking about large numbers of troops
now um overseas in these foreign
countries are going to uh do things
which they're going to not realize even
that they're uh doing things to um
disrupt religious services because the
Chinese they they don't pay attention to
our religion. They don't know what that
is about. uh how much training are they
getting in Catholicism and Islam and all
the different religions we have Judaism
even in the United States? They're
probably don't know much about that at
all. This is just like our troops. We we
might have a you know a little bit of
training here, but we're not giving them
years of training of this. Uh and so the
uh the problem here is that um you see
this in the uh the voluminous
information their last video will and
testament. It's like a video a a video
will uh and their testimonials are a lot
of times to their their mothers, their
fathers, their parents, their uh their
uh sometimes they're they're saying and
and uh I'm I'm so sorry, Mom. I I didn't
pick up the the milk or the this or that
at the store, you know, they're they're
literally saying goodbye.
And some of it is to the uh the foreign
troops, some of it is to their own
governments or their own leaders, but
some of it is just directly to uh their
uh their parents uh which is common. Um
or we had the oldest one with the martyr
video we had, we had a grandmother who
was in her early 60s uh and she was
doing a suicide attack and she was
explaining to her grandkids why she was
doing the suicide attack. which was for
the kids. Uh, and it's because of what
the Israeli military meant and what it
was doing to disrupt the society and
their way of life. Uh, and she wanted
them to have this this way of life that
they were in charge of, not Israel
telling them what they should be uh,
thinking and doing. And that it's it's
to see a 62year-old grandmother, you
know, saying goodbye to her
grandchildren and explaining why. And
she did. that she did go and do the
suicide attack. This is not a a a
mission that did not happen. This is a
mission that happened.
>> That's one of the wildest things I've
heard. I think it would be great to do a
couple just maybe quick yes, no sentence
answers. Just one sentence answers.
>> Very good.
>> Do you think Xi Jin Xiinping is about to
decide how this war ends?
>> No. No. No. No. I think he is very happy
to let things ride. Uh and I think that
he uh doesn't want uh nuclear weapons
used. So I think there will be some
limits here. Uh but I think that he um
uh is probably seeing that uh and this
is what I saw when I went to China, met
with all those business leaders for the
for very long dinners. What they were
telling me is that they would expect
that uh yes um if America gets into a
war with Iran, this will mean a loss of
one or two% of GDP for uh China, but
overall what's going to happen is
America is going to get sucked into a
quagmire that's going to help them grow
and jettison beyond uh America. So I
think that this is probably where where
she is. She she may want some
concessions from Trump uh here. Uh,
>> another one. Do you think Iran has
already won this war?
>> Um, no. Iran is winning the war and this
will be going on for months and months,
but this is not a war that is likely to
end with a peace agreement. Uh, this war
is could easily end up looking like
Russia Ukraine where Russia went into
Ukraine. It was supposed to be a six-
day war. Uh, just like we went in here,
supposed to be a three six- day war. And
four years later, you still have the
ongoing nature of of war. This is uh the
reason it won't end, Jack, is because in
order for this war to truly end, um you
would have to pull back American troops
to their uh December 2025
uh status. And even if we have a um uh
Democratic president come in, this is
going to be very hard to do because we
have so radicalized Iran. We've so
radicalized this regime. Um there is a
uh we will worry about not just them
developing nuclear weapons and not just
them uh controlling Hormuz. We are going
to worry about terrorism coming. We're
going to worry about lots of things. So
for us to just simply walk away from
this, I think this is just an very this
is what a lot of people would like to
have happen. Uh and I bet a lot of
people in Russia wanted the war to end
too when Putin failed and failed again
with the next plan and failed again with
the next plan here.
>> What does Israel actually get out of
America fighting this war? Uh, I think
it thought it was going to get um uh
cover for greater expansion, weakening
their uh most important adversary,
breaking its back. And instead, what
it's done is it's set off a uh um a uh a
real um title wave um of growth for
their their most uh uh probably the the
biggest existential enemy they they
think they had. They they've actually uh
triggered growth in that and they don't
have any good way to stop that.
>> Last question. I'm 24
>> American man.
>> Will I get drafted to this war?
>> Um I am going to do everything possible
with my public work here to see that
that doesn't happen. Jack, I wish I
could say it was impossible. I I would
say that it's probably um uh barely it's
somewhere it's somewhere between um
highly unlikely and plausible. And the
reason is because the trajectory of this
war um long wars
uh here have have really nasty
trajectories
and um if we have a big terrorist attack
in this country uh if we have um so
right now um we know that there have
been Israel has bombed a site that they
thought just in the last month was uh
involved with chemical weapons. So,
imagine if Iran starts to put chemical
weapons, nerve gas agents on its uh
drone missiles.
Bad things can happen here. And during
the Iran Iraq war, Iraq used nerve gas
agents on Iran. So, I'm not saying
they're going to, this is all likely.
What I'm saying is that the the reason
we didn't want to go down this road at
all is because we don't have good
off-ramps. we can't just call this whole
thing off because we decided it was a
bad idea here. we've we've created a
problem and um uh I think that uh the
best way to go forward here is probably
to accept that Iran is going to become
the fourth center of world power and to
uh work with that and maybe then build
um more support or our allies in um
Saudi Arabia in the UAE so that they
don't end up becoming toppled as uh Iran
becomes more and more power. Uh the best
thing to do now is to I think accept
that um we're not not going to have a a
direct US military solution to this
which means we are going to have to
accept Iran is going to become an
emerging force center of world power and
then build a more of a containment
approach here with Saudi Arabia, UAE u
uh to uh strengthen the ability to limit
how far that uh power could spread onto
our allies. Otherwise,
um here I think that we don't really
have a stable place to go, a stable
strategy.
>> Beautiful. Well, everyone, uh this has
been your guest, Robert Pap, Professor
Pap. I appreciate you coming on the Jack
podcast.
>> Jack, thank you very much for having me.