All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg: E149: Hamas terror attacks in Israel: fallout, reaction, next steps
10/13/23 - Episode Page - 1h 6m - PDF Transcript
Themes
Hamas terror attacks in Israel, fallout, reaction, next steps, Trump administration's wins, Kushner's competence, path to a two-state solution, Letter from Harvard student organizations, understanding the reaction and fallout, The Biden Admin's next steps, electing excellence in leadership
Discussion
- The podcast discusses the recent terrorist attacks in Israel and emphasizes the importance of having conversations and seeking understanding.
- Concerns about potential overreaction and the challenges faced by Israel in dealing with Hamas are addressed.
- The presence of antisemitism and woke ideology in leading educational institutions is discussed, highlighting the failure to denounce Hamas's terrorist attack.
- The dangers of divisive ideology and the influence of woke ideology on people's perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are explored.
- The podcast also discusses the implications of blaming Iran for certain events and the need for a strong leader to counter false narratives.
Takeaways
- Seek reliable and balanced sources of information during times of crisis to better understand the situation.
- Encourage independent thinking and critical analysis in educational institutions to avoid biased perspectives.
- Leaders should counsel a measured response to avoid escalating conflicts further.
- Evaluate the content of a message independently of personal biases towards the messenger.
- Finding a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires addressing conditions in Gaza, negotiating with a suitable partner, and supporting a two-state solution.
The podcast discusses the recent terrorist attacks in Israel and the complexity of the situation. The hosts emphasize the importance of having conversations and seeking understanding. They express shock and devastation over the attacks and highlight the need for unbiased sources of information. Concerns about potential overreaction and the challenges faced by Israel in dealing with Hamas are also addressed.
- 00:00:00 The hosts discuss the recent terrorist attacks in Israel and acknowledge the complexity of the situation. They address the criticism of not being experts on the topic but emphasize the importance of having conversations and seeking understanding. They express their shock and devastation over the attacks and highlight the need for unbiased sources of information.
- 00:05:00 The podcast discusses concerns about the potential overreaction to recent attacks in the Middle East, drawing parallels to the U.S. response after 9/11. The guest emphasizes the need for a cool-headed response and cautions against braying for war or leveling the Gaza Strip. The complexity of the situation and the challenges faced by Israel in dealing with terrorist organizations like Hamas are also highlighted.
- 00:10:00 The discussion revolves around the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas in Palestine. The hosts express their thoughts on Israel's right to defend itself while acknowledging the tragic consequences for civilians. They also highlight the importance of separating Palestinians from Hamas and the potential negative impact on long-term peace. The failure of intelligence organizations to prevent the conflict is questioned.
- 00:15:00 The podcast discusses the recent conflict in the Middle East, highlighting the importance of returning the hostages and dismantling Hamas. Despite the setback, there is optimism that this event will renew the commitment to peace in the region and encourage the two-state solution. The podcast also emphasizes the need to address the Palestinian question for a comprehensive Middle East peace deal.
- 00:20:00 The podcast discusses the accomplishments of the Trump administration, particularly the Abraham Accords and their efforts towards peace in the Middle East. The hosts emphasize the importance of looking past personal biases and focusing on the message rather than the messenger. They also highlight the competence and fresh ideas brought by Jared Kushner in his work on Israel and Hamas.
- 00:25:00 The podcast discusses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, focusing on the conditions in Gaza and the challenges of finding a resolution. Kushner's response to the pro-Palestinian argument is highlighted, as well as the difficulties in negotiating with Hamas. The need for a two-state solution and the role of the US in supporting it are also mentioned.
The podcast discusses the presence of antisemitism and woke ideology in leading educational institutions, highlighting the failure to denounce Hamas's terrorist attack. It also addresses ideological bias in prestigious institutions, the dangers of divisive ideology, and the influence of woke ideology on people's perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conversation touches on 'The Inconvenient Minority' concept, cancel culture, the negative consequences of wokeism and socialism, and the need for intellectually capable leaders in government amidst concerns about President Biden's cognitive decline.
- 00:30:00 The podcast discusses the presence of antisemitism and woke ideology in leading educational institutions. It also highlights the failure of these institutions to denounce Hamas's terrorist attack and the war crimes committed. The conversation focuses on the response of Harvard and its student organizations, as well as the reactions from alumni and CEOs.
- 00:35:00 The podcast discusses the issue of ideological bias and lack of critical thinking in prestigious institutions like Harvard Law School. It highlights the importance of independent thinking and the dangers of subscribing to a divisive ideology. The conversation also touches on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how the woke ideology influences people's perception of the situation.
- 00:40:00 The podcast discusses the concept of 'The Inconvenient Minority' and how it challenges the simplistic woke ideology that categorizes minority groups as oppressed and white groups as oppressors. The discussion also touches on the issue of cancel culture and the importance of owning one's words and actions. The hosts debate whether Bill Ackman was out of line for his comments about hiring from certain schools.
- 00:45:00 The podcast discusses the negative consequences of wokeism and socialism, arguing that they promote mediocrity and discourage excellence. It also highlights the inefficiency of the U.S. military procurement system, which leads to inflated costs compared to other countries. The consolidation of defense companies and the lack of competition contribute to this problem.
- 00:50:00 The transcript discusses the potential escalation of the conflict between Israel and Gaza, the depletion of US ammunition stockpiles due to the Ukraine war, and the need to fix the broken procurement system. It also mentions the importance of innovation in maintaining global position and supporting allies. The transcript touches on the role of excellence in society and the desire for young, successful leaders.
- 00:55:00 The podcast discusses the need for intellectually capable leaders in government and expresses concerns about President Biden's cognitive decline. It also highlights the shift in global power dynamics, with China and Russia emerging as significant players. The importance of smarter thinking, de-escalating conflicts, and building strong relationships with other countries is emphasized.
01:00:00 - 01:05:50
The podcast discusses the dangerous implications of blaming Iran for certain events and the need for a strong leader to counter false narratives. It also explores the qualities of Trump's presidency, including his avoidance of new wars and willingness to negotiate. The discussion touches on the potential impact of COVID-19 on his re-election and the desire for new choices in leadership.
- 01:00:00 The podcast discusses the dangerous implications of blaming Iran for certain events and the need for a strong leader to counter false narratives. It also explores the qualities of Trump's presidency, including his avoidance of new wars and willingness to negotiate. The discussion touches on the potential impact of COVID-19 on his re-election and the desire for new choices in leadership.
All right, everybody, welcome to episode 149 of the All in Podcasts with me again, David
Sacks and Jamath Palihapatia. David Freeberg couldn't make it this week. We're going to
carry on without him. And it's a difficult week. So just a quick opening statement from
me about this episode. Like all of you, we're devastated by the terrorist attacks that occurred
in Israel on Saturday. And I just want to start the discussion here with two important
housekeeping notes. First, this is obviously a very dynamic situation. And we're dealing
with the fog of war quite literally. So we're going to do our best to make sense of what's
happening. But things will change between when we tape this episode on Thursday, and
you choose to listen to it in all likelihood at some point over the weekend. Second, there
are going to be some folks out there who claim quite correctly that we are not the experts
on this topic. And thus, we shouldn't chime in with our opinions. On the other side, the
All In Community has told me explicitly they want to hear us discuss what happened. And
they want a sense of normalcy. As one loyal listener explained to me last night at a dinner,
the fact that the four of you can debate hard topics, listen to each other, and in the end
have a deeper understanding of the world gives me hope every week. That's why I listened.
So we'll do what we do here every week. We'll have the hard discussion. We'll listen to
each other deeply, hopefully, and we'll try to understand the world and each other just
a little bit more. And that's worth it, at least to me and apparently many of you. So
with those two quick disclaimers, gentlemen, anything you want to say up front before I
recap where we are five days into this senseless brutality?
I think that was a pretty good intro, Jason. I mean, you're right. We're taping on Thursday,
late morning, Pacific time. By the time this drops, it'll be Friday. And so a lot could
have happened. Also, it's true that the Middle East, in general, and this topic in particular
is hugely complicated. We will be accused of not being experts, but at the same time,
the audience seems to appreciate our opinions as consumers of information who are trying
to make sense of the world. So that's all we can really do.
Right. And conversations, I think, are how we make progress. Any thoughts before we get
started here and I'll recap what's occurred to not any opening thoughts before we get
into the details here. On behalf of somebody who worked in Israel, have a lot of friends
there, spent a lot of time there. It's really just a terrible, devastating situation. I've
really tried to stay off of social media just because it's allowed me to kind of think a
little bit more logically. It's fast and furious right now, I think, on X. And it's just a lot
of people trying to make sure that their version of the truth is amplified over every other
version of the truth, which I think is like a, is the point in the cycle where you just
have to almost unplug from the matrix a little bit and find a few places that seem to be
just telling things in an even-handed way, which I also find on X. And then just kind
of reconstruct what happened, why it happened, what do we do from here? I don't know. I have
a lot of thoughts on a lot of the peripheral issues, but the core issue is just, I'm just
stunned that this happened. I don't even know how this is possible that this happened.
Like Jamath, I'm not trying to get too weighed in too deeply into the tweets, but
I did notice you, by the way, I have stopped tweeting. You've done a couple of retweets,
but you paused this week, a lot of your tweeting.
Yeah, I mean, I think that this is a more time to listen and learn and process what's going on.
This is not a great time to be having hot takes. I have posted a few things. First of all,
Jason, you've made the analogy to 9-11 being in New York right now. I think that
that is the comparison that's been made, is that this is Israel's 9-11.
I think that's a justifiable comparison in two respects.
One is this was a terrorist attack. It was an atrocity. This was a massacre of civilians.
Even if you're somebody who believes in the Palestinian cause, you should be able to recognize
that these were war crimes. The videos are coming out. The stories are coming out. In particular,
the rounding up and slaughter of 260 attendees at a music festival was really beyond the pale.
They're clearing some of these farming villages and so forth,
and finding the bodies that young families basically killed.
Anyway, we don't need to repeat all of the details here, but this was, I think,
an attack on civilians that is reminiscent of 9-11 and has affected the Israeli people in a
similar way. I think the other analogy to 9-11 that's worth discussing is the reaction to this,
what Israel's going to do, and what the reaction is by U.S. political figures.
You heard people like Nikki Haley basically saying to Netanyahu finish them. It wasn't exactly clear
whether she was just talking about Hamas or the whole Gaza Strip or maybe Iran,
and then if there was any ambiguity about that, you just had Lindsey Graham come out
and say, level the place, meaning referring to all of Gaza.
Yeah, it's crazy.
I'm very concerned that one of the purposes here of the terrorists was to provoke an overreaction
like the U.S. engaged in after 9-11. Remember, we were viciously attacked. We were wounded.
We then lashed out and plunged into two decades of wars in the Middle East.
What was the result of that? We lost thousands of lives or our own soldiers. We spent trillions
of our treasure. Millions of people on the other side died. At the end of the day,
we only changed the geopolitical map of the Middle East in ways that were ultimately
unfavorable for us. Iran became a more powerful country. The region became destabilized,
and we squandered the sympathy that the United States had in its moral position that we had
after 9-11 in the eyes of much of the world. The U.S., I think, fell for the trap that I think
bin Laden laid, which was to provoke us into an overreaction. I think that is one of the goals
of terrorists. It's to create such an outrage, such a provocation that they will bait the other
side into an overreaction. I'm quite concerned that could happen here. I think that our U.S.
leaders should be, as friends of Israel, should be counseling a cool-headed response. I think
braying for war with Iran or suggesting that the entire Gaza Strip should be leveled would be
doing exactly the wrong thing. It would ignite the Arab street throughout the Middle East.
Perhaps that was the goal here. We're trying to figure out what is the goal of this attack
that was planned for years. Perhaps that was the goal, is to try to take all the hard-fought
peace and progress that has been made in that process over the last couple of years, Abraham
Accords, and stability, and then just really create a full-scale escalation.
I think that's right. I think Israel is within its rights to dismantle and destroy Hamas. Hamas
is an organization that, in its charter, has said they're committed to the destruction of Israel.
They've now committed this atrocity. Again, it was if they had just limited their attack on
uniformed Israeli officers and military, I think that would be one thing, but they went much
further than that. The vast majority of the casualties here are civilians who were
murdered in atrocious ways. I think there are terrorist organizations in Israel as well within
its rights to destroy them. However, the question is how you do that. Like a lot of terrorist
organizations, Hamas can melt away into the population of Gaza. They apparently have these
elaborate tunnel networks. They've got bunkers, so it's not clear that you can destroy them from
the sky through bombing. Those kinds of bombs would lead to a lot of civilian casualties,
which will inflame the situation and turn a world opinion against Israel. At the same time,
if they go in with ground forces, that seems like a really tough situation as well because
Hamas is waiting for them, and they will have to fight a guerrilla war in a very tightly packed
dense urban area where Hamas likely has anti-tank weapons, weapons that we've seen that have been
so effective against armored vehicles in Ukraine. Again, if the fighting gets too hot, they can
disappear into these tunnel networks. There's going to be IEDs everywhere. It's going to be a very,
very tough fight for the Israelis. I think they're in an incredibly tough spot.
I'm not quite sure what the right reaction is for them, but I do think that
if the reaction is this, let's call it the Lindsey Graham level-the-place reaction,
I think that could set off a much wider regional war or even a world war. That is not something
that's ultimately going to help Israel. I hope that our leaders are wise enough to be counseling
against that. I get the sense that they're not going to go that hard. If you look at the American
response to 9-11, going into Afghanistan and dismantling al-Qaeda, a noble mission, and we
didn't have any more terrorist attacks on America. We thwarted most terrorist attacks. There were
attempts, actually, and our intelligence was very strong over the last couple of decades. We haven't
had another one of those, but you're right. Going into Iraq and then what was the last decade
about being in Afghanistan? We went into Iraq. We went into Syria. We went into Libya. We stayed
in Afghanistan for 20 years. It should have been a quick surgical strike to take out al-Qaeda and
their Taliban hosts, and then we should have gotten out. Even that is incredibly difficult
as a mission. As you're pointing out here, Hamas can just fade away into the Gaza Strip and into
Palestine. Who knows? Shema, I guess where we're at right now is trying to make sense of why this
happened and what the next couple of weeks might look like. Your thoughts?
I think Israel has every right to defend itself, and they should eradicate Hamas. This is not like
we woke up and found out that they were a terrorist organization yesterday or on Sunday.
We've known this for years. They've been labeled as such. People have been monitoring their money
flows for years. We know where they were funded, but the thing to keep in mind is that those 30,000
Hamas terrorists have also been keeping 2.2 Palestinians hostage for the last 20 years,
and of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, half are kids.
David's right. The thing to keep in mind is, as barbaric as what happened to the Israelis were,
Israel, in its actions, could cause tremendous civilian casualties, which will just further
inflame the ability to find a long-term peace in the Middle East. That's really tragic, and that's
probably part of Hamas's kind of sadistic calculus, which is they probably expected this kind of a
reaction, and they probably don't care at the end of the day. It's important to separate
Palestinians from Hamas, but I understand, and I know where Israel is coming from because we
face the same reaction after 9-11. The question that I have is, Israel is the most sophisticated
military and intelligence organization in the world, and the reason is because,
when everybody talks about priorities, Israel only really has one priority, which is to
safeguard the Israeli people, and they've been essentially in a conflict zone with this sort
of Damocles since the founding of Israel. There are three organizations that really have to figure
out what happened here. There's Mossad, which is the foreign intelligence service of Israel.
There's Shin Bet, which is the domestic security apparatus, and there's Amman, which is the
military intelligence group. It's like, how did this happen? Because this should have been
priority one, two, three, and four, and it has always been for them. Other countries, the safeguarding
of their people is not necessarily always number one, and then things happen, and then you reprioritize.
In many ways, that's what happened in 9-11, I guess, at some level in America.
I mean, we had all the signal before that, and when we did the 9-11 commission and we found out
they were going to flight school here, and it was pretty clear
that it was an intelligence failure for America.
Those are the two big thoughts that I have, which is, there's just going to be so many
civilian casualties. What will that do to actually, I think that that has a huge negative
impact on the long-term chances of peace, because then radicals will use that information to further
or to attempt to radicalize the next generation of Palestinians or other Arabs or whatever,
and so I worry that the progress that was made in the Abraham Accords, all the normalization
goes off the rails, and that's tragic because most of these people, the overwhelming majority of
all people everywhere, they just want peace. They just want to live a
peace and life, prosperity, safety, take care of their family, raise their kids.
So that's really tragic, but then the other part of my mind is like,
how could this have fallen through the cracks, and why were the most sophisticated intelligence
organizations caught flatfooted here? It is going to be a lot of information that will come out
over time and lessons. And by the way, the reason why that second piece is important
is not to point the finger at anybody, but it's to de-escalate because of what Saq said earlier,
which is that when people who can articulately gird for war are given the bully pulpit and you
see American politicians now braying and girding for war, I don't think they fully recognize the
consequences of that. They're not doing a full accounting of what America has lived through in
the last quarter century, and now to induce other countries to try to do the same, I think is so
dangerous. And so if we can understand where these cracks are, at least we can de-escalate
those specific individuals' attempts to escalate. And if we don't do that, we're going to find
ourselves in a really complicated war. And I don't think anybody wants that. Nobody wins.
Nobody wins. Yeah. I mean, at this point, really, the returning of the hostages seems to be the most
important high order mission that has to occur. After that, clearly dismantling Hamas and this
terror apparatus. But having started to spend some time in the region and talking to people
over there, and again, I'm no expert, but I have been talking to people who've been working on this.
People who've been working on trying to create peace in the region for their entire lives.
And this is definitely a setback, but I'm an optimist. And I actually think that in some ways,
this is going to create a climate where people are going to really fight to try to resolve the
situation, or at least contain the situation. Two-state solution, the Abraham Accords. And I
think this is going to renew people's commitment to peace in the region. And I know many, many of
the countries over there are really aghast at what happened. And they've been working really
hard to try to normalize relations there and create peace and prosperity and commerce
and between the different countries in the region. So this is just heartbreaking for the loss of human
life and how that occurred. And then it's also heartbreaking for the peace process and all this
progress that's been made recently. And so I think it's, there's no silver lining here,
but I do think this will, maybe the good people of the world will recommit to trying to
resolve this issue and create peace in the region. That's my hope. I know it's simplistic and again,
no expert, but that's my hope. And I've been spending time over there and learning a lot
more about the region. These are multi-generational issues that are going to take generations to
figure out. And it's two steps forward, one step back, obviously. But man, for the politicians
and the people negotiating this piece and they work so tirelessly on this for their whole lives,
you know, keep at it. I mean, that's all we can do, right?
I mean, Jason, I think disrupting the process that was happening towards normalization of
relations between Israel and Arab states, specifically the Gulf monarchies, I think was one
of the objectives here. So, I mean, Israel's contention for a long time is that they want to
negotiate peace. They want to negotiate, but they don't have a partner to negotiate with.
Whether you believe that or not, that was their position. And with the Abraham Accords,
we saw that they started to be able to negotiate, again, normalization with three
Gulf Arab states without involving the Palestinians. And it looked like that issue was being put to
one side and that they were kind of going around it. And the idea being, look, if you won't negotiate
with us, then we'll figure out a way to move forward without you. The big news that's been
going on in the last few months is that supposedly Israel and Saudi Arabia were close to
working out some sort of normalization. And I think that process has been put
on hold until I think this has been dealt with. And so, I think one of the takeaways here is the
idea that you're going to be able to get to Middle East peace without resolving this Palestinian
question. I think this is basically a return to the reality that that issue is simply going to have
to be dealt with. I don't think we're going to get to a larger deal in the Middle East. We're not
going to resolve all these problems until this long festering problem of the treatment of the
Palestinians is dealt with. I think you're right that the two-state solution is the only
possible solution that makes sense. I mean, what's the alternative? A one-state solution
means that either it's run by the Israelis, but presiding over hostile Palestinian minority that
may eventually one day be the majority and you're forced into some sort of apartheid state. Or the
Palestinians are running that one party state and it means that the Jews have been pushed into the
sea. So, neither one of those solutions looks very good. So, that leaves you with a two-state
solution. However hard, however impossible it seems to negotiate that, it's the only option.
Yeah, it's the only option. And it's a real opportunity. I think my hope is that
instead of pushing Saudi away, this actually pulls Saudi closer and says, okay, this is a chance to
really normalize the global perception of the Middle East because if there can be a way for
Israel and Saudi to build a bridge here, I have a lot of hope that there can be a lot of stability
and a lot of the good work. I mean, again, like, man, as a Democrat who has been left homeless,
who is now definitely in the center, but probably leaning increasingly right, I'm left yet again
with an appreciation despite the messenger of the message of the Trump administration because
what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight. These Abraham Accords, the Accords
with Israel and the GCC, the almost accord between Israel and Saudi, to really be able to like find
a long lasting peace is just a real example for the world. And those guys still a lot of really
good work. And it's a miracle, actually, when you when you look at it, what they did, you know,
despite the fact, listen, I'm no fan of Trump, and I am too homeless. But this is where I say this.
If you want to objectively look at what they did, that was good work. It was great work. You have to.
You have to. And in fact, this is a moment where you have to start to
reunderwrite like, is your not Euro Jason, but I'm just saying collectively, is one's
Trump derangement syndrome causing more damage than anything that Trump could have actually done?
And I think the answer is yes, because like it's now causing us to not see
that good work and then embrace and extend it. So much of the work that happened in that
administration. Turns out to have been right. And that's what's so frustrating for me.
The work on the border wall, we didn't like the messenger. So we killed the message.
Turned out it was right. Issuing long term debt to refinance when rates were at zero,
we didn't like the messenger. So we killed the message. A structural piece in the Middle East,
we didn't like the messenger. So we killed the message. When are we going to stop shooting
ourselves in the foot? And what are we going to actually see and take the time to look past
who was saying things and actually listen to them word for word? I'll give you an example. I
started to tweet three links a day over the past three days. And the only reason I did that was
I thought things were so hyper contentious and hyper partisan that I just wanted to show a few
sides, right? And one day I found a couple links, two of which one was from Jonathan Greenblatt
of the ADL who I thought had a very powerful message. And one was from Mike Flynn.
And his message was also actually pretty powerful if you just read it. And if you took the names off,
all the content was so valuable, both points of view. But the minute it goes into the world,
people immediately judge and they kill the message because of the messenger.
And this is exactly a moment where you have an opportunity to just stop doing that because the
stakes are so high. It's infuriating actually, quite honestly. It's infuriating to see it.
We had this last week on the show when we were talking about reducing spending. Matt Gates is
not the perfect messenger, but his message was the message we've been talking about, which is,
hey, we have to control spending. So I can understand people not liking Matt Gates. Gates,
there's a lot of things to not like about it. I can understand people not liking Trump and
get over it. Well, and then, you know, it's bizarre that his son-in-law went to do all this work,
but yet he did it and it had success. That's another example. It's weird if you listen to
your son-in-law to do it, but I listen to the last three podcasts. No, it's not weird because at the
end, if you listen to this podcast, the most important thing that is resoundingly obvious
about Jared Kushner is that he is incredibly thoughtful and incredibly competent.
And why did we have to spend years being fed all of these stupid lies? Because one can judge for
oneself, but Jared Kushner is thoughtful. He's smart. And I thought to myself, I was fed all
these lies for years about how this guy was like moping around in the shadows and this and that,
and it was all not true. Well, no, when I say it's non-traditional, if you sent,
you know, any president's son-in-law, daughter-in-law, whatever child to go to the Middle East,
on its surface, this seems insane. But in fact, they did good work. And so it's not traditional.
It's not what you would expect. He's thoughtful and competent. That's what I thought after.
That's what I got out of it as well, is that he's thoughtful and competent. Yeah.
Yeah, he brought some fresh ideas. Just so the audience is clear, what we're talking about is
he just did an interview with Lex Friedman, and the first hour was on what's happening with
Israel and Hamas. Must watch, I think. I thought it was excellent too. Excellent. It was excellent.
He did, just in terms of having fresh eyes, he did things like focus groups. He's like, okay, what
does the Arab street think about various topics? And he actually did focus groups in various
countries to find out. So, I mean, I think Kushner made a number of really interesting points
showing how difficult it's going to be to get to a two-state solution.
But first, you have to set up, what does the Palestinian side say? And what they say is,
look, Gaza is effectively an open-air prison. You've got over 2 million people packed into
this very tight area. There's something like 50% unemployment. It's impoverished. The conditions
are deplorable. And they don't have their own state. They don't have rights. And it's been like
this for a long time. So, that's sort of the basic pro-Palestinian argument. Kushner's response
to that was, well, yeah, but Israel left in 2006. It left Hamas in control, gave them the keys
effectively. The reason why there's such high unemployment is because Hamas is corrupt and
doesn't enforce property rights. And they scare away all the investment. Nobody wants to invest
there. And Israel did give work permits so people could leave Gaza to go to work and look what
happened. I mean, when they try to open up the walls, you have a massacre. So, these are the
points that he made. Look, I think both sides of this have legitimate arguments and points to make.
I think that the conditions of the Palestinians in Gaza is deplorable and you have to feel
for the civilians who live there. Of course. But then, the Israelis have a right to live
without fear, the fear that their security's in jeopardy and that this territory can be the
launching pad for terrorist attacks on their soil. So, it's going to be an extremely difficult thing,
I think, to reconcile this. But Kushner made a couple other interesting points. He said,
listen, the Gaza part of this is not that hard because the boundaries, the territory lines are
not in dispute. There's no religious areas that are in dispute. For example, you don't have the
status of the Temple Mount or East Jerusalem. And there's an economic plan to revitalize
Gaza Strip. So, you really just need a negotiating partner for the Israelis to figure that out. And
of course, now the problem is, who do you negotiate with? I mean, Hamas is a terrorist organization
that is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. So, it's really a tragic situation you look at
and you're like, this should be easy to work out, but it's not. It's a relatively small area.
It's a relatively small number of people. It's two million people. We should be able to figure
out the rest of the free world, how to at least have a path towards this. And the first step is
getting rid of Hamas, right? There's no choice, but they have to go. I don't really know if that's
feasible, Jason. I mean, look, if there was a button that Israel could push to
eliminate every member of Hamas, yeah, sure, they'd be within the rights to push that. The problem is
that Hamas is now deeply embedded in a civilian population of over two million
that's densely packed. How do you root them out? It's going to take decades. It's going to take
decades. And they're basically supported by that population as far as we can tell.
And again, if you take measures that are perceived as too drastic by the rest of the
world, then you will inflame the opinion of other countries, you'll turn it against Israel.
So, again, it's a really tough situation, but I think that the US should not only
affirm its support for Israel, it should not only denounce the atrocity that happened on
10-7, but I think it needs to reiterate that Biden administration does its support for a
two-state solution. I think that the US has to be on record that what's in everybody's long-term
interest, including Israel, is ultimately a two-state solution. And the Palestinians are
eventually going to have to have their own state. There's simply no way around that.
Right. Yeah. And the free world, I think, is in the process of getting engaged and making this
happen because it's in everybody's interest. This can't keep going on. And so hopefully this,
again, I don't want to say silver aligning, but I hope that this, the good that comes out of this
is that the world focuses on resolving this conflict or continuing it.
Were you surprised at all, Jason, by the amount of people that seem to be almost justifying?
Fat was shocking to me. I mean, the fact that people could make any kind of equivalence between
terrorist activity and the level of brutality, I can't even describe it because it'll trigger
my PTSD, which I had after 9-11, and it still affects me. I'm sitting here not far from
ground zero. And, you know, for people, you know, educated people, oncologist campuses,
or just otherwise to blame the Israelis for the murder of children, for people being,
and then justifying rape and torture and kidnapping. I mean, there is no justification,
and there is no equivalency. There's no equivalency here. And this is one of the big
problems. And, you know, these dopey kids on Harvard's campus or whatever, they have never
experienced evil or suffering. We can literally just dismiss these idiots because these are kids
who have never faced evil. But, Jason, I don't think you can. I think one of the things that was
shocking to me was the level of basically either subtle or latent antisemitism.
Unconscious, yes, subtle, whatever. That it unlocked. And I was also shocked at just,
Sox has used this word before, but it's true. But our leading educational institutions have
really become woke madrasas. They are inculcating kids with just some virulent poison.
I think the reaction is always to go after, to support the underdog, I think, in this group of
people. Whatever they perceive it. That is an idiotic simplification that the smartest schools
in the world, educating the smartest kids in the world, should be capable of seeing past.
That's how they think. It can't be that simple. This is not my feeling. It's half antisemitism.
It's half they just think, who's the underdog? I'm taking that side.
I didn't get that simple. In the woke mindset.
Well, look, I think it was disgusting and disturbing to see these organizations and these
elite institutions being unable to denounce Hamas's terrorist attack and the atrocity that took
place or turning out in the streets to celebrate what happened. And we saw a lot of that too.
Look, even if you support the Palestinian cause, even if you believe that they've been mistreated,
even if you think that their land has been occupied, they deserve their own state,
even if you believe that war against the state of Israel is justified on that basis.
These were still war crimes. These were beyond the pale of war. Again, Hamas did not just attack
some military installations on the border and kill soldiers or capture soldiers.
The vast majority of the people who were killed were civilians. And there was no conceivable
military purpose in, for example, paragliding into a music festival, a festival for peace,
by the way, and then rounding up and slaughtering the concert-goers. There was no conceivable
military justification for going into these kibbutzes or farming communities, you know,
mass crime families. No, no, it's deranged. It's deranged. It's deranged. So.
It's deranged. It's terrorism. And the fact that they can't frame it as terrorism is insane.
But think about what happened, okay? I just want to frame the order of events, okay?
10-7 happens. And I think within 36 hours or less, let's take Harvard as an example, okay?
The pinnacle of the woke madrasas. They had all these student organizations immediately come out
trying to justify this thing without any information, right? Because in the first 36 hours,
obviously not nearly as much information was available as to exactly what happened
than it's been available now, as an example. I should read the statement just so people have
clarity here. Please.
Joint statement by Harvard, Palestine, solidarity groups on the situation in Palestine.
We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all
unfolding violence. Today's events did not occur in a vacuum. The last two decades, millions of
Palestinians and Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promised to
quote, open the gates of hell and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. Palestinians
in Gaza have no shelters or for refuge and nowhere to escape in the coming days. Palestinians
will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel's violence. This is deranged and sociopathic.
My point is you have like 15 or 20 of these student organizations of all ills, okay? So it's
not just pro-Palestinian groups. It was like the Harvard Seeks Association, okay? Like Seeks in
South Asia are the most peace-loving people in the world. They're not pro-war of any kind whatsoever
or pro-terrorism. So all these people write this thing which blames Israel. Okay. Then the school
is totally silent. The school doesn't say anything. They neither completely disavow that statement
nor do they come out with a more reasonable statement. All these ex-faculty and ex-individuals,
Larry Summers sort of leading say, this is outrageous. Have an opinion. They come out with
something that's milk toast in the middle of the road. Then they get soundly rejected by
everybody yet again. Then the administration comes out and gives a cleaned up version that tries to
allay everybody's anger because that the first statement I think basically essentially pissed
off everybody on both sides. Then a bunch of alums who've already graduated or who've given money
say, these student organizations are outrageous. We will not hire anybody who's part of this because
their views are so immoral that we would never want these people part of our organization.
And so here it is. Bill Ackman, just so people have this, Bill Ackman said,
I have been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of
the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter of signing so responsibly for Hamas's
heinous acts to Israel so as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members.
In other words, you must own your words, which is important lesson for young people.
So then what happens is individual students actually have to come out who are part of
these associations that were signatories to the first release, had to disavow the statement
and said, actually, I'm just an Indian student at Harvard Law School. There's a Nick, maybe you
can find this tweet of this like Indian woman from Colorado or of Indian heritage. And she's like,
you just get auto recruited into these organizations when you join Harvard. So I'm like, well,
wait a minute, this is a place that's supposed to be for like modern free speech, progressive
thinking. And instead, what happens is based on your skin color, you get auto drafted into
some association, then you auto sign any press release written by some person that you don't
even see or approve. What is going on at these places? And these are the places that parents
and kids are tripping over themselves, trying to get into kids will kill themselves if they don't
get into. And these are the worst institutions in America, because back to Jason, what we talked
about earlier, which is we need people who can think from first principles, those kids are not
it. And those institutions are not making them. And so if we want to have a point in time,
where when things like this happened, we can really figure out what happened in the past
that was right. And what can we do in the future? It's not this, and it's not this kind of thinking.
And if you're going to a school, Harvard, Cornell, U Penn, Stanford, that are spitting out these kids,
I think it's a real shame.
You're spot on. I mean, how sacks could there be any question about the difference between
military terrorists, with machine guns, gunning down people dancing peacefully at a music festival
at sunrise, and then make some equivalency there. And you cannot actually ascertain for
yourself that is a terrorist act. If you can't from very basically opening your eyes and seeing
what occurred. And, you know, thank God in some ways for for X not being censored, because you
can actually see these things. And I know it's very difficult for people to watch. I don't
have any judgment on people who don't want to watch it. But I think when the world sees
these videos, and you're going to write this letter, you should very quickly be able to discern
military terrorist fighters from hippie kids dancing at a music festival. It's plain as day.
There's there's nothing, there's nothing to confuse you here. This is the most easy test.
You have to be brainwashed to see something other than that. These schools are woke madrasas.
Yeah, so a couple of points on that. So if you look at their statement, I think it's
it's appropriate and fine to express concern about the people, the civilians living in Gaza,
and what the Israeli response might entail. I think it is fine and good to do that, both for
humanitarian reasons and for self-interested reasons, if you're a supporter of Israel,
because this could all spiral out of control. However, these people completely lit their
credibility on fire from the first paragraph by saying that Israel is entirely responsible for
what happened and not having one word of condemnation for the atrocities that had just been
committed. They cannot even see the war crimes that have occurred. They don't even mention Hamas.
They don't even mention the actual people that perpetrated the crime. Right. So the question
is why, you know, what is it about their ideology that blinds them to this atrocious massacre?
And I think it is this, I do think it has to do with this woke mindset. The woke ideology is a
form of cultural Marxism in which people are divided up into oppressor and oppressed groups.
So in Marx's original teaching, you had the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, basically the
oppressed and the oppressor. This kind of went through this cultural identity filter with woke
where, again, people are divided up into identity groups. And so you've got men versus women,
white versus black and brown, you've got straight versus gay and so on down the line.
And the idea is that there's a power structure. And if you are in one of these groups and you
are by definition oppressed, and if you are in one of the oppressor groups, then by definition,
you are guilty in a collective way. You're suffering from collective
guilt. Yes, by default, the people who are oppressed are the righteous ones.
Yeah. Right. But I think that what you see is that when you divide up the world this way,
first of all, this is not a very accurate way of looking at the world. I mean,
there are lots of minority groups in the United States that have done great. So for example,
there's a book written recently about Asian Americans in the United States called The
Inconvenient Minority. Why is it inconvenient? Because Asian Americans have done spectacularly
well. They get into elite colleges and institutions at higher rates than whites do,
which is why they're the primary group that's discriminated against by affirmative action
before it was overturned by the Supreme Court. But the reason why the author called them The
Inconvenient Minority is because their success in America refutes a lot of this sort of simplistic
woke delineation between if you're a minority group, you're oppressed, and if you're in this
white group, you're the oppressor. I think Jews have fallen into a similar type of categorization,
which is they're an inconvenient minority. They've been historically very successful in America,
despite there being existence of antisemitism. And I think that the woke ideology has reacted to
this by saying, no, you know, Jews are not really an ethnic group, they're just whites.
And so that's been the response, right, is, well, let's just put them in the oppressor group. So we
don't need to explain away their success. One of the problems with that is that you have to ignore
the existence of antisemitism. And so they do, they just pretend like it doesn't exist. So here
you have a situation where all of these things are in play. They've already predefined the Palestinians
as being an oppressed people. And look, and I think in many ways they are, but they are not
incorrect. But they've defined it in racial terms, really. And they've defined the Israelis and Jews
really more generally as being part of an oppressor group. And so everything fits into that larger
narrative. And so when members of one of these woke oppressed groups commits an injustice,
they just can't see it. I mean, their version of social justice is always defined in terms of
collective guilt. And if you're a member of an oppressed group, by definition, you're not capable
of committing an injustice because you don't have the power.
Do you guys think that Bill Ackman was out of line by saying, I don't want to hire kids
from these organizations in these schools, because it's just like these kids and these
schools will bring, basically, I think what he's implicitly saying is distraction and it will
lower the probability that I achieve by corporate goals. So these are not good workers.
Based on your comment about thinking from first principles and being able to assess the situation,
I think that's probably what happens at a hedge fund. You have to place bets and you have to be
able to think from first principles and be intellectually rigorous. This is the most
intellectually lazy approach. I'm just going to sign a piece of paper without even thinking.
So no, I don't think he's out of line. I think it's an important lesson for people. This is
about freedom of speech. This is owning your words. You must own your words in position.
And it's important that young people learn this now. You have to own your words, whether it's on
social media or signing some stupid petition that you didn't read. And there's a lot of backtracking
going on right now, by the way. I can't believe that if I got into Harvard, I would get auto-drafted
into the Brown Men's Association just because of the color of my skin. That's the dumbest thing I've
ever heard. Let's point out the double standard here that these elite Harvard students want to be
exempt from their words, their statements. They don't want to be canceled for that. However,
you know that when some hapless schmuck basically posts some tweet or posted a tweet 10 years ago
that gets resurfaced, they're the first ones clamoring for their cancellation.
They would like for their firing. They would like amnesty for their idiotic opinions.
Well, what's good for the goose here is good for the gander. If they're going to create a cancel
culture where people get canceled for their decade old tweets and so forth, then they should be
prepared to live by that standard. Now, look, personally, I would have some degree of forgiveness
for a college student being part of an organization that puts out a statement. They're claiming they
didn't know, okay, but then why didn't you resign? Look, I don't think there's a good excuse for this
other than youthful stupidity. So I wouldn't cancel them forever. But look, I do think that
it's fine and appropriate for someone like Bill Atkinson. I don't want to hire you people.
Yeah, and I would just be careful for you to add the word youthful because I think it's just
get out of jail free card. It's definitely stupidity. The question is, is the cake baked?
And if the cake is baked, then there's a big argument to never hiring these people. I mean,
look, I would just say your frontal lobes are still developing until you're 25 years old. So I
would give college kids a bit of a pass if they do stupid stuff. You're there to learn,
you're there to make mistakes. No, that's not what I'm saying. This is a huge mistake.
You're saying the bakes fully baked, you mean like their opinions and who they are?
What I'm saying is you learn a lot from actions, drink too much, don't drink,
don't exercise enough, you get a little sluggish, maybe a little overweight. I get all of that.
I'm not convinced that when you have this fundamentally specific way of thinking
that you can unwind that so easily, Jason. So I'm not convinced that this mind virus gets fixed
because you all of a sudden need a job. I actually think like maybe it's the struggle
of realizing that there are deep consequences to this vein of thinking that this oppressed
versus oppressor or the other way that it was framed in our group chat is that wokeism and
the embracement of socialism is basically running away from excellence. It's this idea
that everybody has to be the same. What communism says, we all are the same. Nobody is special.
We're all going to work together, do the same things. We're all going to dress in the same ways.
It's the collective we, there aren't going to be exceptional outliers. But the problem is that's
not how the world works. And so the other part of why these woke madrasas are so terrible is that
it teaches, I think, to work away from excellence. And instead of striving for excellence to strive
to be part of a collective. And I think that that is fundamentally corrosive to America. It's
corrosive to what God is here. It's corrosive to all the great countries in the world.
And so then again, it's like, why would you hire kids who fundamentally don't want to be excellent,
who are afraid that if they were excellent, they would be guilty of something? That's ultimately
the question. Why would any of these kids go to such an elite school to basically be taught
that it's wrong to excel? All right, well, let's say I think perhaps a good segue.
And then as a result, not think for yourself. And then as a result, sign something like this,
which is just stupid. We'll continue to discuss this topic, I guess,
in the weeks ahead. Again, hopefully this conversation was productive for the community,
the all in community. I understand that, you know, people might have very strong feelings about,
you know, us discussing it, but we're here to discuss difficult topics.
There's one other aspect to this, I think we should talk about, which is the United States is
larger geopolitical situation right now. I mean, things seem very ten U.S. I did an event with
Paul Merlucky, actually. Oh, friend of the pod, friend of the pod. Tell him I said hi.
Am I in if I got lost? Yeah, we actually had a nice debate slash discussion on Ukraine.
But the thing that I think we agree with is that the U.S. better bring more innovation
at the military industrial complex and figure out like procurement, because our whole cost
plus system right now is so broken. There's an article recently in the New York Times where it
said that the cost of the United States of producing an artillery shell is $6,000. For Russia, it's
$600. So in other words, it costs the U.S. 10 times what it costs Russia to produce an artillery
shell, even though Russia is considered to be this super corrupt kleptocracy where everyone
steals everything. And yet our procurement system is 10 times more efficient than theirs.
We don't have competition and all the politicians are captured, correct?
We have this cost plus accounting system where every year the price goes up.
A good opportunity to explain that, yeah. So in every other part of technology,
price goes down over time, right? You can produce more of something for less. We've seen this with
Tesla, we've seen it with PCs, we've seen it with television sets, whatever it is,
the price goes down over time. Laptops, servers.
Yeah, or if the price goes up, it's because you've developed some funnily new capability,
some new version. Yeah, more powerful chips.
More storage. Exactly.
Faster speed.
But we're still making the same artillery shells, the same stinger missiles, the same
javelin and so forth. I don't think the capabilities have changed that much, but the price goes up
every year because it's cost plus. Explain cost plus. People may be hearing that for the first
You know, most companies sell something and then they have a profit margin, but the way that
government procurement works is the profit margin is controlled. They're only allowed to market up
a certain amount above their cost. But the thing that's happened in the defense industry is there's
been huge consolidation over the past couple of decades where now you've got a handful of defense
companies and it's an oligopoly. And many of these key armaments are single source,
so there's only one producer and they just keep raising the price every year. Now, one of the
kind of crazy things about this is, and Palmer made this point, is it's not like anyone's getting
rich because of cost plus. It's not like the money is basically making these companies
There's no incentive to lower the price. If you lower the price and you're at 10% and you got your
$6,000 down to 4,000, 10% of 4,000 is a lot less than 10% of 6,000.
What's happening is not perverse incentive. Google like margins. What's happening is
that these companies keep building their bureaucracies bigger and bigger. They hire lots of staff.
They make a lot of campaign contributions. They fund think tanks. And so their cost
structure just keeps getting more and more bloated. Right. They're incentivized to do that.
The more they charge, the more they make. Right. Now, why am I bringing this up? Well,
we're in a situation now where Israel might be on the precipice of, well, they've declared war
against Gaza and this thing could spiral out of control and become a regional war.
They may be asking for weapons soon. They may be asking for weapons. We've already
donated some. However, earlier this year, we used to have an ammunition stockpile in Israel.
The United States did. It belonged to us, but it was there potentially in case of a problem
in the region. And that artillery stockpile was basically taken and given to Ukraine.
And remember, we ran out of the key type of ammunition in the Ukraine war, which is 155
millimeter artillery shells. That's why we gave them cluster bombs. So the U.S. is already dangerously
low on ammunition. And that's before we get potentially another war or another front in
this larger global configuration that's happening. We get asked to support another
country's war. To be clear, we're not at war, but we've been asked to donate weapons to
Ukraine and we've been asked to donate weapons. I think Israelis have asked for weapons.
I don't know if they formally asked, but we are obviously going to provide them.
I think there's a bill making its way through right now that's going to give some
aid to military assistance to Israel. By the way, we...
Israel also is a major builder of weapons too. I mean, their drone technology is incredibly
refined and they sell weapons to Russia and the folks.
Israel is nowhere near the Ukraine situation. Ukraine is 100% dependent on the United States
for its military and for its economy. Israel has a vibrant military and economy without the
United States, but the United States does make long-term security guarantees to Israel not
to fight its wars. There's no mutual defense treaty. However, we do agree to provide them with
weapons in the event of a war. So we do have obligations like long-standing obligations
to them. This is an ally we've had for 75 years. However, our stockpiles are dangerously depleted
now because of the Ukraine war. And on top of that, our procurement system is hopelessly broken.
So in a world of rising multi-polarity where there are other great powers now in the system,
where there are going to be more and more global threats, I don't think we have a chance of maintaining
our global position and supporting our allies unless we fix this. I mean, making artillery
shells at 10 times more than what it costs Russia, that's ridiculous.
In Silicon Valley, we have now the funding of military startups and there's a whole new
class of warfare, supersonics, drones. Innovation is the only advantage we have.
It's the only advantage we have. And it's happened, right? I mean,
this is one of the great things. I mean, I understand Palmer is not a huge fan of mine,
but I'm a huge fan of the work he's doing and other entrepreneurs are doing to make new weapons
to keep us competitive because you can be sure China's making them. And so I think it's absolutely
fantastic. I thought it was always very weird that Google, speaking of work madrasas,
like Google, Google employees were refusing to provide services, like even basic
cloud hosting services to the military to benefit from democracy and living in America
while then not supporting the military just seemed like the ultimate luxury belief to use
Rob Serm from the All Insanity Mafia thoughts.
What does it take guys to, for this fever to break, for all of these people to realize that
that level of corruption is not sustainable, that these ways of thinking are not sustainable,
that it's not a path to peace and prosperity, that we actually want excellence in society.
We want people to be outliers. We want the whole of humanity to move forward. And that's not going
to happen when we move necessarily as one blob, but a few people need to sort of
clear the brush and lead the way and the rest of us will come in and fill it in behind them.
I think Vivek is the manifestation of it. I'll be totally honest. I think the reason he is
going up in the polls and the reason people are drawn to him is because he's smart and he's exceptional
and he represents one of the great things about America is that there's people who want to win
and they're smart and excellent. He represents excellence, right?
He represents excellence.
I think that's why people are drawn to him. And I think people are tired of
an military industrial complex. They're tired of corruption. They're tired of geriatric,
you know, 80-year-old politicians. We need young, successful people to take leadership
positions. And by the way, I really agree with what you're saying. I think that there's like,
excellence can show itself in different forms. I think why Obama was so profound and Joe Rogan
said this was he was such a statesman. He was the best of us, but he demonstrated excellence in
being composed and measured and thoughtful and strategic. He was just so excellent.
The Clinton as well, Clinton as well. Clinton was incredibly steeped in policy. He was excellent.
He was intellectually a massive outlier. Obama is an intellectual outlier. Vivek is an
intellectual outlier. Let's get these people to change and run our system of government, please.
I think we're soaking in it.
Yeah, we need smarter, more capable people. I mean, you look at Biden when he gave that speech
in support of Israel. I mean, a lot of the words were right, but he was like slurring his way through
it. It certainly does not inspire me of confidence.
It was his best speech and it was concerning the fact that he's clearly incognitive decline.
You can see it in his ability to orate. It was his best speech and it was also troubling for me
as somebody who voted for him to watch him slur his words or just not. It was clear he wasn't
all there and you're like, geez, what are we showing to the world if this is the guy who's
running the country? If we reelect him, now we're saying, hey, we want to have an 84-year-old
running the country who's not all there and is incognitive decline. Let the guy retire. Let him
spend time with his grandkids. I think it's more people who are willing to vote for not for what
they want, but to prevent something else. I think that that's what's so tragic about how
we're thinking as a country right now. Yeah. Just to dish it out equally, I mean,
I saw Trump give a recent speech where, look, he's nowhere near the cognitive decline of
Biden. I think he's still compassmentus, but he's not as sharp as he used to be either.
Listen, I think America's basic situation, and this has really been reaffirmed over the past
week is that we're no longer in unipolarity anymore. We're no longer the sole superpower.
Yeah, not for some time. China is now a superpower. They're probably the low-cost
manufacturer of the world. So when we talk about being able to make things like armaments and
artillery shells and weapons, they have the ability to outproduce us. That is very scary.
There are other great powers in the system now. Russia has proven, over the last five months,
through its victory and this counter-offensive, that it is a power to be reckoned with. We cannot
disregard their concerns anymore. And not only does America need, I think, top flight
leaders like intellectually who are at the top of their game, but we also need new thinking.
We need to be able to sidestep challenges and conflicts as opposed to walking into every
single trap the way that Lindsey Graham wants us to. Again, I'll go back on the Ukraine War.
I think it's really clear that we could have avoided that war if we had taken NATO expansion
off the table. And whether you believe that or not, it was criminal not to try.
If it was a 5% chance, it was worth trying. And now look at our situation. We're already mired
in the Ukraine-proxy war. Now Israel is on the brink. We need smarter people and smarter
thinking in Washington. We are no longer the only superpower. We're going to have a really tough time
in a multipolar world if we do not look for ways to de-escalate conflict when we can.
Or putting aside conflict, why are we not building deep ties with as many countries as
possible? Deep cultural ties, deep economic ties, deep diplomatic ties. Every time we are in dialogue
with a country and we're building a relationship with that country, that means free people of
the world are winning. And every time we isolate a country, that does not go well for us.
You're right. We're sanctioning half the world. That's another big part of this problem.
Yeah. And so the normalization of relationships and the deepening of relationships,
that is the high order bit. And you need somebody in office who can do that. And if you look at
how the hawks in the GOP or the hawks in the Democratic Party think, they think that we
have to be at war with everybody. They think we have to isolate everybody. The fact that Trump
went and that famous moment where he walked over in the DMZ in North Korea and was talking to
Kim Jong-un, that moment, you see on Kim Jong-un's face, we can put it in here,
he is so happy to be recognized. Now, listen, I understand. He has a shock look on his face.
Like, I can't believe this is happening. Right. The same way he did when Dennis Rodman came over.
No, it's like a fan meeting Taylor Swift. If you look at those videos and you compare it to this,
it's the same. And culture is our export. And I know this is-
What we were talking about, Jason, is soft power.
Simplistic.
Yes. And it can all be hard power because other countries have it too now.
So we have to work on our soft power, but you're not going to enhance American soft power with all
this belligerent rhetoric. Really, this omnidirectional belligerence that's coming out of Washington.
And this is why I think the smart thing for Blinken to do or the Biden administration is,
yes, you reaffirm that you stand with Israel in the face of this unspeakable atrocity
at the same time. And you don't have to do this right now, because it is a little bit tough to
do it right now. But also-
Well, with a hundred hostages.
Soon, you have to reaffirm your support for the two-state solution.
Absolutely.
That I think the United States has always supported.
And by the way, I think Tony's done a really good job. But again, at the end of the day,
Tony works for President Biden. And it's like, Biden hasn't been nearly as definitive as he
could have been. And Tony's had to clean it up. So one example of this is like in the Wall Street
Journal, they immediately on Sunday went to blaming Iran, right? And then both the Israeli
military intelligence and American intelligence, they had to do an entire press circuit to try
to disarm this in a way that was not seen in a long time. And you have to ask yourself,
why is that even happening? And it's like, well, whatever special interests wanted to
get that on the front page of the Wall Street Journal was able to do it. But it has dangerous
implications. And then what you need is a really strong leader that can step up and say,
this is false. This is not happening. This is what we need. You needed an Obama in that situation.
And I think that this is sort of-
Or a Clinton, yeah.
Or a Clinton.
Reagan.
And I think that this is an opportunity for us to ask ourselves, okay,
who is the most dynamic, excellent candidate that can give us this? And be open-minded and
not make this line about Republican versus Democrat right now, because the world is getting
super complicated. We need someone hyper, hyper, excellent and intellectually competent.
Well, I will say this for Trump is that he's the only president in recent memory who didn't
give us any new wars.
Best quality.
Yeah. I have a lot of-
I think he has a-
Despite all of his issues, I think he has a unique ability to project strength
to the American public while not being one of these super hawks. He's actually,
I'd say, relatively dovish.
Well, he actually walked through his secret plan. He said, I can't remember where this
clip, but he said whenever he met with these folks, he basically left a 10% chance that he
would nuke him. That's what he said. And it turned out that that 10% was just enough for
the-
Just enough crazy for everybody to stay alive.
It was just enough-
Well, I think the U.S. already has enough deterrence. I think we've maxed out on deterrence.
I think the thing that was smart about Trump was that he was willing to do business.
Yes. Absolutely.
He was willing to negotiate and he didn't feel the need to make these
moral condemnations all the time. He was willing to meet with Kim Jong-un. He was willing to meet
with Putin and Xi Jinping. And he avoided criticizing them personally. He didn't call them
dictators. He talked about how smart they are.
Yeah.
It's the art of the deal, right? I mean, at the end of the day, he's looking to do business.
We need a little bit more of that. And I think this is why Jared Kushner was successful, is
he went in there with the mindset of a businessman.
Yeah.
How do we find something that's beneficial to both sides?
Totally right. I think that when Trump was elected, I was told that it was the end of the
world. And that's what I thought. And I'd already underwritten him as an F, okay?
And then four years into the presidency, he was probably like a C in my mind. And then,
as I get a little bit of distance away, I realized, no, hold on a second. This guy was
like a BB plus. Like he was pretty good. And unfortunately, the few things that if he could
have just pushed through would have really saved America, the biggest one being these 100-year
bonds. It would have kept America from getting to the precipice of fiscal ruin. And we'd be in a
highly different situation. And I'm not sure we could have ever given him credit for it. But
the further and further I get away from him and the less emotional I am,
he did a pretty good job. He was a pretty good president.
Don't forget that he tried to overturn and steal the election.
I voted for Hillary Clinton. I voted for Joe Biden. But this is the honest assessment. The guy
did, for the things that he was supposed to do, a good job. And for where every other president
found a way to frankly make our situation a little bit worse, specifically around wars,
he did not do that. And that is a huge accomplishment that I think needs to be acknowledged.
And he would have ripped up the constitution and taken the presidency and stolen it. So
just give that in mind as well, lest we give him a huge pass.
That's why he's not an A. He's a B, B plus.
Jason, you have to admit, if it weren't for the black swan of COVID, he would have been
reelected in a landslide. It's quite possible he would have been reelected.
I mean, and also, yeah.
By the way, I mean, at this rate, the way things are going in this country right now,
both economically and internationally, he's going to waltz into the White House. He's going to
spend all of his time in the next year in the courthouses battling all of these lawsuits,
the lawfare against him. He's not going to be able to campaign and it won't even matter,
because people are going to be so done with this.
And nobody wants him as president again. So I think that's nobody wants that. Everybody
wants new choices. All right, everybody, if you do not want to hear us talk about
complex issues in the world, you can unsubscribe from the pod. We're going to be here every week
having hard discussions, listening to each other and learning together.
You don't have to agree with any one of us, but we are happy to have the difficult conversations
and learn every week here. And yeah, our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and the friends
of those impacted by this heinous terrorist attack. And I don't know if anybody has any other
closing remarks here, but obviously we're heartbroken and we hope that peace prevails and
that the hostages are released as quickly as possible.
Well said.
All right, everybody, this is episode 149 of the All in Podcast. Next week, we'll talk about all
the different topics, but for this week, we're going to let it sit where it is right now.
See you next time. Bye-bye.
Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.
Keywords
Antisemitism, woke ideology, Hamas, war crimes, Harvard's response, Blaming Iran, False narratives, Trump's presidency, Avoiding new wars, Negotiation, COVID-19 impact on re-election
People
Bill Ackman, Larry Summers, David Sacks, Jamath Palihapatia, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Jonathan Greenblatt, Mike Flynn, Matt Gates, Jason, Israelis, Nikki Haley, Lindsey Graham, bin Laden, Obama, Clinton, Reagan, Trump, Kim Jong-un, Putin, Xi Jinping, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Vivek, Palmer, Rob Serm, Joe Rogan
Companies
Organizations and Institutions
Abraham Accords, Harvard Law School, Mossad, Shin Bet, Amman
(0:00) Opening statements on the Hamas terror attacks in Israel
(3:49) Contextualizing the attacks and the fallout so far
(19:52) Trump administration's wins, Kushner's competence, path to a two-state solution
(28:51) Letter from Harvard student organizations: understanding the reaction and fallout
(46:53) The Biden Admin's next steps, electing excellence in leadership
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Referenced in the show:
https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1711544829828862144
https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1711501410712654162
https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/1711156580828295246
https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1712170815637061914
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_MeKSnyAo
https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1711421307227607255
https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2023/war-in-the-middle-east
https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1711761982469107955
https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1711788747086233661
https://twitter.com/MohiniTangri/status/1711987537533612322
https://www.amazon.com/Inconvenient-Minority-Admissions-American-Excellence/dp/1635767563
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/us/politics/russia-sanctions-missile-production.html
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-hamas-strike-planning-bbe07b25
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/us/politics/iran-israel-gaza-hamas-us-intelligence.html